The Final Iteration
by gythia
Summary: A sequel to the Queen of the Sith series. A mysterious man with Sith tattoos claims to be a time traveler. His name... Lord Luke! Warnings: torture and adult situations. Time Yarns crossover.
1. Chapter 1

The Final Iteration

Chapter 1: Lord Luke

The apartment was still, warm, and slighty stuffy. It was as dark as night ever got on Coruscant, with the endless lights of buildings, air vehicles, and billboards outside filtering around the edges of the curtains. Muffled sounds of air traffic vibrated softly through the transparisteel window.

Luke looked around muzzily. He must have gotten up out of a dream. Or, no. This apartment had weapons displayed on the walls. It was still furnished to Mara's taste. He felt confused, then wondered why he was confused.

Mara slept peacefully in their rumpled bed. Her chest rose and fell gently with her breathing.

Luke froze and stared, scarcely daring to breathe.

Mara!

Grief, relief, love, a thousand shattered dreams, and one perfect moment. Luke clamped down on the mind-shout. Only a tiny wave of it got past his shields.

Mara stirred and turned uneasily in her sleep. Her hair, its color stolen by the shadows, fell across her face as she curled toward the place where Luke should have been.

Slowly, he took one step forward. He almost expected wooden floorboards to creak and give him away, although he knew this Coruscanti tower was built of no such thing. Mara did not wake up.

He took another slow, careful step. Then another. Should he try to lie down beside his wife? She might wake up, and then who knew how this would all turn out. She might vanish into a puff of cloud like the fairies of Craickmore 8. But she might not, and he might be able to hold her again, and look on her with his own real eyes, not the eyes of Force-visions only.

She might wake up and smile at him, and hold him one more time. But for some reason he knew that was not going to happen. Even though he had no specific memories or visions of this particular night. There was something wrong.

Whatever it was, it would arrive in its own time. For now, he had one perfect moment, after another perfect moment. One perfect hour. For however long it stretched. Time was elastic for him now. He could not remember why.

Mara. She was really here. Well, why wouldn't she be here? They lived here. Didn't they?

Didn't they?

Mara was alive.

Luke gasped out loud as the memory took him. A memory of finding Mara's body on some rocky, deserted world; but Ben had found her first, and he wept, cradling his mother's corpse.

No, not memory. Vision. It had to be a vision. So he could still prevent it. Couldn't he?

Mara! Mara was alive!

Mara woke up. She rubbed her eyes and said, "Luke? What's wrong? You're back early." Then she sat up in bed and gestured to the curtain, throwing it back with the Force, to let in the light from the traffic stream outside. Aircar lights streamed across Luke's face. Mara screamed.

"What? What?" Luke said, panicking with her panic, jerking his face from side to side, looking for some adversary.

Mara jumped out of bed and called her lightsaber, activating it without looking as she charged straight at him, the blade describing a perfect arc in the dimness.

Luke ducked and backed up, and tripped on the unexpected hem of a cape. He did not try to pop cleverly to his feet or pull his own saber to defend himself. This was not their usual game of stalk and pounce; the feelings pouring off of Mara were dark with fear and outrage, not the sly, amused arousal that he would expect if Mara were just playing with him.

"What are you doing?" Luke whined. "Mara!" Her name had the longing of years behind it. Years, stretching out in front and behind and to the side, as if time were a ball field marked off by merely arbitrary lines. Years, years of grief, years of peace, years of darkness and revenge, years of resolute brittle strength, years and years and tears long since shed and fallen to the ground.

The sense of her name in the Force stopped Mara cold. She squatted over him in the blue-white light of the weapon that had once been Luke's, and that had once been Anakin Skywalker's. She held it up to his face like a glowrod, moving it slightly to examine his features.

Luke shied from it and flattened back against the floor, making no move of defense.

"Who are you?" Mara leaned forward, reaching one hand across him to lean on, enclosing him. The gesture could have been possessive and intimate, but it came across as merely convenient. Mara moved the lightsaber to within a centimeter of his face, studying him closely. The intense light made him squint like the Tatooine moisture farmer he had once been.

"What do you mean, who am I? I'm Luke."

"You're an old man. And you have tattoos like a Dark Lord of the Sith out of the Golden Age."

"Oh. That. Um. I can explain that. I think."

"Explain quickly, Dark Lord."

"Well, it's – complicated. And a very long story. Why don't I just show you? Look, I'm open to you. I've dropped my shields. Look into my mind."

Cautiously, Mara extended a mental tendril. Her eyebrows rose as she found no shields at all, not even the normal unconscious shields that even non-Force users usually possessed. Whoever, whatever he was, he was clearly willingly allowing her entry to his mind.

She explored the contours of the landscape within. Luke winced a couple of times as Mara pushed a little on some closed off areas. Finally she deactivated the lightsaber and stuck it through the waistband of her pajamas.

Luke sighed in relief, but stopped mid-sigh as Mara abruptly grabbed him and rolled him over. Mara extended a hand as she opened a drawer with the Force and a coil of rope flew into it.

"Hey!" Luke objected. "Not that I don't love this game, Mara, but somehow I don't think you're playing right now."

"Shut up, Sith." Mara tied his hands behind him with shock-cord.

"I showed you my mind! Can't you see it's me?"

"I see that you sincerely believe that you're Luke. That doesn't mean you really are. I think you're a clone. An evil Sith clone."

"A clone?" Luke scoffed. "You said I looked older than you expected. Why would a clone be older than the original?"

"I don't know," Mara said. She pulled him to his feet with an assist from Force levitation, and added menacingly, "But I'm going to find out."

Casually, she flicked on the lights in the room with the Force, using it to subtly press a button. She frisked him professionally, never letting go of his arm, never touching the shock cord, or letting him get his balance, in a way that left no doubt she had once been trained in Imperial commando tactics. She relieved him of the weapon at his belt.

The taste of her emotions in the Force grew sharp and dangerous as she examined it. "This is Luke's lightsaber! What have you done with him?"

Mara wheeled him around and deposited him in a chair, which thumped back against the desk behind it. She looked like she was contemplating using the lightsaber as a truncheon.

Trying to stay calm and reasonable, Luke said, "Of course I'm wearing Luke's lightsaber. I'm Luke."

In an instant Mara had both lightsabers out and lit, pointing them at either side of Luke's head. "You Sith bastard. Where's Luke?"

Luke looked more hurt than frightened as he looked up at her. "Why can't you see in my mind that there's only me? I'm still open."

Mara moved the lightsabers to a less threatening position, out and pointed mostly down. "You are open. Through all that, you never raised your shields," Mara said softly, and her Force-aura lightened in contemplative probing. "And I can sense how powerful you are."

"It's me. It's me, Mara. Look into my mind."

Mara's voice went sarcastic, which was to say, it returned to normal. "Your mind is a mess, Sith-boy."

"Probably," Luke shrugged. "My memories are all confused. I think I've sorted them into a kind of order, but you being alive falls somewhere in the middle, not at the end where the present should be. I don't really understand myself, yet. But can't you still tell it's me?"

"You are generally, Luke-ish, I suppose. Inside and out. Your mind feels older and well, Sithier, than the Luke I know, just like your face. But you have memory caps."

"I know about that," Luke said calmly. "Please leave it alone. There are so few of the many horrors I've lived that I don't have to remember. Leave that one."

"Not just one. Layers of them, in fact. And there's a broad swath of completely vaped-out black nothing in there. I've only ever sensed anything quite like it in one person. Qwi Xux. You've been mind-rubbed. Badly and violently."

Luke winced. "I actually remember that. Oddly enough."

Since he was still shieldless, when the memory came it played in front of Mara like a holofeature.

Luke, looking much as he did now, his face lined and tattooed, dressed in a black bodysuit and cape like a Sith mercenary, knelt in front of the black iron Spider Throne. The room was full of tattooed Sith Lords. Like Luke, they had the Blackstar tattoo on their foreheads and the columnar lines on their cheeks.

On the throne sat Queen Dije Kun in black snakeskin and the iron Chain of Office, the forehead eight rayed star tattoo, the cheek lines, and the forehead crenellation tattoo of her royalty making her face a mask, and yet there was an odd, stern pity in her eyes.

"How many times have I told you to stop using the Great Machine?" Dije said. She spoke in Ancient Sith, as was her custom in the later part of her rule, when increasing prosperity among her people made her hold even closer to kasenth, and she tried to create luxury out of nothing by decreeing the court language to be the ancient tongue.

"No times, in this timeline," Luke said softly in the same language. He had long since become fluent in both Modern and Ancient Sith, living uncountable years in the court of the Queen in many timelines. "I haven't been here before."

"But it is still you, and it is still me, and I remember. Or, I have seen. Whichever it is. Vision and memory are all one for you, are they not? For me also. For I have seen the dreaming face of Fala, and I am Queen."

Luke bowed his head slightly, not in submission but in resignation. "It is still you. And you are kind and merciful. For a Sith." His mouth quirked slightly as he said it, not in irony but in memory of her as a young Dark Lady out to find a path out of the darkness. "I don't believe that you want to harm me. That is not your way."

"You're right. It's not. But you are still afraid. As well you should be. Drop your shields, Luke."

"What are you going to do?"

"Take away your knowledge of how to find the Great Machine."

"Oh."

There was a soft sound in the room as the courtiers stirred uncomfortably. They had known the Queen was displeased with Lord Luke. They had almost expected her to torture him with Force-lightning, in the traditional way that a Dark Lord dealt with dissatisfying underlings, although no one had ever seen the Queen use the lightning for anything but initiations and combat. And they had all heard the stories of the Queen hunting down her enemies and committing sarav on them in the days before she returned to Sith-ta. They had even heard that she had once committed sarav against Lord Luke himself. But no one now living had ever seen her do it.

"Drop your shields, Luke," Dije repeated. "I have more than enough Sith here to hold you in a suppression field if I have to. This will hurt less if you don't resist."

Even the toughest of the Sith Lords in the room flinched to hear this. Sarav was a terrible crime on Sith-ta. Many thought it was even worse than sar, the physical violation of the body. Her words strongly recalled that sarav was a form of sar. That their gentle Queen could do this to a loyal follower, and one who had once been her teacher, horrified even the Sith.

"I do this as an alternative to killing you, Luke."

"I see," he whispered, nodding. He inhaled a calming breath in the Jedi way. Then he dropped his shields.

Before he could change his mind, Dije knifed into him, cutting at his memories with a practiced surgical precision. It had been decades since her campaign to eradicate the knowledge of how to make the Purple Tears drug, but she had not forgotten how to seek and burn.

Luke shrieked and clutched his head with both hands, his hair standing up between his fingers like stalks of grain in the field ready to be scythed down. He fell over wailing, started to leak tears and was suddenly and terribly embarrassed to cry in front of Dije, for all the terrible old reasons, and curled up around himself and pulled his hood over his head.

As he took a ragged breath, Dije speared one of her subordinate Sith Lords by eye and commanded, "Get him out of here." Then she softened it by saying, "Take him somewhere quiet where he can rest and recover."

The image wavered as Luke remembered the view from near the ground, being picked up in the Force and floated off like a box out of a ship's conveyor belt. The grey expanse of the stone floor, a glimpse of the skin of one of Queen Dije's enemies displayed on a column behind the Spider Throne, a slantwise view of Dije watching him in concern and regret, a snake-headed goddess with her hair in a hundred plaited black ribbons, a stray sparkle of light reflecting off the white jewel in her gauntlet.

Mara took several large breaths as she came back to herself out of Lord Luke's memories. She whispered, "Who are you, really?"

"I'm Luke," he groaned.

"That was no Force vision," Mara said. "That memory had weight. Substance. But it hasn't happened."

"It happened to me," Luke said. "About thirty or forty years from now. I think."

"I'm going to solve the mystery of you," Mara said. "I'm going to peel you back one layer at a time. Whatever you are, I'll figure it out."

"Whatever you need, Mara," Luke said. "Whatever you need to do to convince yourself I'm real, and I'm really me, I'll let you. You said yourself you can feel how powerful I am. I could get out of these restraints any time I want, you know."

Mara nodded. "I think I know that. Yes. I also think you're enjoying it, a little."

"Even the Luke of your time period would have enjoyed that much, if I remember. I was such a wreck when I married you, Mara. Well, I had a right be. Considering my, ah, romantic history. It didn't take you long to figure out I wanted to feel like I wasn't really making choices, when we were together. Too many of my choices had gone wrong."

Mara sighed, and shook her head slightly. "You really feel like Luke, when you think of the past. But… you are a Sith Lord. Aren't you?"

"Yes. Of that much I'm sure."

"Well. How much of the Sith culture have you internalized, Lord Luke?" Mara asked, almost as if talking to herself. "There are things I could never share with my Luke. Things I kept safely buried. Shall we explore your memories and your responses, together, Luke-shaped Sith that you are?"

"If you're trying to ask me if I've learned to enjoy the pleasures of the Sith court, only by proxy. I've seen Sith play, of course. Felt their emanations in the Force. But I've never participated."

"Well then. Perhaps you're curious," Mara suggested, a half sweet, half twisted smile on her face.

"Um, not really. But if that's really what you want. As long as you're here with me. Any moment with you, even in pain, is better than any moment without you, no matter how picture-perfect."

Mara shook her head. "You really love me. Sometimes you're very much like Luke. But you're not my Luke. You're a Sith who looks like him. Who are you?"

"Luke," he insisted.

"No. Lord Luke, perhaps."

Luke shrugged. "As you wish."

"Now. Let's see if we can produce a little more truth. Lord Luke." Mara gestured, and the drawer from which the shock-cord had come opened again.

A packet zipped into her hand. From it, she shook a slender needle. It was not the kind of needle used to inject pharmaceuticals; it had no interior. It was just a tiny metal rod.

Mara paused a moment, in a kind of dark nostalgia. "I once knew all the common pressure points of hundred species. Humans are easy to remember; I had practice."

Luke's saber started to shift in her waistband, and Mara pulled it back out and reactivated it. "Let's start the peeling process with the outer layer, shall we?" She cut away the snakeskin suit, not being too careful about the skin underneath.

The first time he got singed, Luke instinctively drew on the Force to heal and suppress pain, but then he dismissed it a moment later. The next few times, he did not draw on the Force.

Mara finished carving away the protective layer of leather, and carefully sank a needle into a pressure point in his upper arm. He made a noise of protest but sat still and did not call on the Force. With his shields down, Mara could sense the sharp pain wafting off of him.

Mara tilted her head and looked at him sideways, as if trying to get a new perspective on the puzzle. "Why are you intentionally letting yourself feel pain you could suppress? Why are you letting me do this to you?"

"Because you want it," Luke said quietly. In his mind, he added, I love you, Mara. I'm Luke.

Mara heard him clearly. She twirled the needle, and Lord Luke cried out. He did not try to endure in stoic silence; he knew she could feel his reactions in the Force, so there was no point.

Mara took out another needle. She put a finger over the same spot on his other arm, the right one, and traced it down his arm to what should have been a pressure point on the inside of his forearm, just a few centimeters from the shock cord. He did not struggle against the cord, perhaps knowing that Mara had shock cord and that pulling against it would cause it to deliver a shock. Mara inserted the needle in his arm, and he felt nothing.

After a moment, Mara realized it was not a real arm. "You have an artificial hand. Like Luke. The real Luke."

"I am Luke," he said softly.

The memory that came then was one located firmly in the actual past: the searing pain of losing his hand, the terrible fear, the even more searing truth. And the wind. The wind, as levels of Cloud City went by, in a long fall into shadow.

Mara took the two needles out, shaking her head. "I can see that you believe that. But a clone would believe it. Somewhere in your jumbled memories there's got to be a clue to your creators."

"Why do you think torturing me will help sort it out?" Luke asked, so softly she heard it more in her mind than in her ears.

"Maybe I don't!" Mara said sharply. "Maybe this is a drill." She tried to be completely closed off in the Force, but it was hard to do that and still read his mind. She could tell that he knew she had fallen back into a trained habit out of shock at finding a Sith Lord in her bedroom.

She discarded the used needles by dropping them into the blue-white blade of the lightsaber. It was so hot, instead of melting and dripping to the floor in molten heat, the steel flash evaporated into a metallic stink. Mara deactivated the lightsaber and tossed it casually onto the desk behind Lord Luke, as if tempting him to take it.

She shook out another needle into a precise grip between finger and thumb. Her other hand pulled up on his thigh, lifting and separating. Lord Luke caught his breath and helped.

Mara glanced up at him, at his wide-eyed breathless stare. "No, I'm not going to torture you there. You might enjoy it."

I long for your touch, Lord Luke thought.

Mara grimaced as she heard him. "This is your sciatic nerve," she growled, sticking the needle into a precise spot on the back of the leg.

He shrieked unselfconsciously.

Mara took the needle out, but Lord Luke kept screaming, his leg cramping up so that the knee bent under the chair. He tipped his head back and panted, and sweat broke out on his forehead.

Mara felt a stirring in the Force like a dusty breeze, as if Lord Luke was barely containing the urge to use a pain suppression technique.

"This is ridiculous," Mara said. "Alright, go ahead. Block the pain."

A wave of gratitude floated out to her from Lord Luke's mind. He called on the Force and sighed in relief, not only blocking the pain but using heat to relax the muscle. His foot came back to the floor.

Mara threw the third used needle onto the desk next to the lightsaber, and then tossed the mostly full needle packet beside it. "Stang! How am I supposed to interrogate you, you filthy Sith doppelganger?"

"I'm still open, Mara," Lord Luke invited.

Mara balled up her fists and stared into his eyes. She projected herself into the flotsam of his chaotic mind. No, not chaotic, she realized. There was a trained and focused mind in here, as disciplined as any Jedi, and if it was possible, she thought he might actually be stronger than the real Luke. He was just temporally confused. Not in the way that a senile old man would be, although she sensed an impossible span of time within him. The memory caps and the burned-out place within him made the architecture of his mind convoluted and encysted. There were strands of memory where he seemed to be self-sacrificing to the point of martyrdom, and threads where he let himself run to dark desires as twisted as anything Mara had seen in the Emperor's court, and oddly, some of them seemed to coincide. He was a beacon of light; he was Sith to the core of his being. He still thought he was a hero through both the day and the night.

"How old are you?" Mara whispered.

Another memory welled up in him. The dim humidity of Dagobah: Yoda saying, "When nine hundred years old you reach, look as good you will not, hmm?"

Irony, that was the emotion Mara sensed from him. Because he had lived dozens of full human lifetimes. He was older than Yoda.

"That's impossible," Mara said. "Time travel is impossible. Flow-walking, yes, but no one has this much physical reality when they're flow-walking."

"I'm not flow-walking," he responded. "You can't change anything that way. I keep trying to make it all come out right." He sat up straight and gasped, "That's it! I must have come here to do something!" Then he blinked. "But what am I here to do? I thought I had it the last time. Or was that the time before last? Did I spend my just previous lifetime as… no."

Mara caught a glimpse of the throne room here on Coruscant, in the Imperial Palace. She had once bowed before that throne, to her teacher, her mentor, her beloved leader, her everything… Palpatine. Now she saw Lord Luke on that throne. Hands gripping the arms of the throne like a death grip on the galaxy. But no, he was not Lord Luke as he appeared here, and did not have the tattoos.

"Perhaps that was my first lifetime? Or my second?" Lord Luke wondered aloud. "Yes, my second, I think. The first altered future out of the Great Machine. That's why it appears so clear to me. Or I came here to do something related to that? I almost had it."

"Time travel," Mara said.

"You believe me?" Lord Luke said eagerly. "Mara, I've been without you for lifetimes. Maybe I only came here to die—to have one perfect hour with you before I go. No, that's not it. I wouldn't risk changing time if I had it right the last time. I must be here to change something again."

"I believe that you believe it," Mara said. "Just like you believe you're Luke. Let's see what's under those memory caps of yours."

Mara stretched out with her feelings.

Lord Luke remembered…

End of part 1


	2. Chapter 2

The Final Iteration

Part 2: Outer Layers

The small ship jinked through a maze of combat, carrying Lord Luke away from a battle. Han, Leia, Jaina, and several Jedi Masters were there, including Kyp Durron, a Barabel, a half dozen humans, and a Bothan.

"Well?" Kyp asked. "Is there one less Dark Lord of the Sith in the galaxy?"

Utterly weary, Lord Luke sighed, "No."

"What?" shouted Han. "All that and you failed?" White bursts of explosion and lances of fire crisscrossed the starfield through the transparisteel viewport.

"No, I didn't fail. I killed Darth Caedus. But I am no longer a Jedi."

"You should have let me do it!" Jaina exclaimed.

"Yes, I should have. Next time I will. I have to leave."

The Barabel sissed a little, her species' equivalent of laughter. "Leave? Now? That is a good one. You may be Skywalker, but you are not Voidbreather."

"I'm not getting out here," Luke groaned, stretching combat-stressed muscles.

"Where do you think you're going to go?" asked Han.

"Behind the Blockade."

"With the rest of the Sith?" Han accused. "You know the Vong broke the Blockade."

"Oh, yes. Well, to the court of the Queen, then. As always. I don't expect all of you to fly me all the way there in this shuttle. Drop me off somewhere with a starport, and I'll make my own way."

Kyp unlatched himself from his seat and went to stand in front of Lord Luke. "You announce you've become a Sith in a room full of Jedi Masters and you expect to just walk away?"

"It's not like that, Kyp," Luke sighed. The words came slowly.

"Then what is it like?"

Luke shook his head. "It would take lifetimes to explain."

"Your arrogance amazes me," Kyp replied.

"Don't try, Kyp. You won't accomplish anything."

"Have you forgotten I'm more powerful than you?"

"Not anymore," Lord Luke replied in a strong voice, stirred to wakefulness. In the court of the Queen, an accusation of weakness had to be countered. "You speak of inborn potential. I was once hung up on that too. All that Chosen One nonsense. But I have learned the secret of Darth Plagus the Wise, who could manipulate the very stuff that makes life in our galaxy resonate in the Force. You puny Jedi have no idea of the true nature of the Force. Plagus used his power to engender life. Fool. What good did that do him in the end? The end result of that was me, and he died just the same. I've used that skill to increase my own power. Far past the point of any possible inborn potential, since this much of a cellular load of midichlorians could never divide enough to make an adult person. I'm not only more powerful than you, Kyp, I'm more powerful than my father ever was, even at the height of his powers when he was all biological."

Kyp was staring, and standing as still as it was possible to stand in a ship still maneuvering to avoid laser blasts. Kyp was not looking behind Lord Luke, but Luke did not need to see anyone's attention shift to know there was someone behind him. The Force was his ally.

"Don't," Lord Luke said. He did not bother to turn around. "Put that down, Leia. If you ever raise a lightsaber to me again I will use the power of Darth Plagus on you, and leave you to choose between the slaughter of the innocent and the shame of being thought to have broken the final taboo."

"What?" Leia said. It was not because she did not understand. She caught the swamp-water stench of Lord Luke's festering designs easily in the Force. It was just a random noise of shock. "You're not Luke."

"Of course I am. I am Lord Luke. And the same Luke I've always been. And it was Jacen who died on that ship today, Leia. Jacen. Darth Caedus was never real."

"Don't say that!"

"Deactivate your lightsaber and sit down. Stop trying to hurt me and I'll stop trying to hurt you. Don't bother the buzzbug and he won't bother you."

Through this whole exchange, Lord Luke never turned around to look at Leia. He kept his gaze on the floor.

Leia turned off her saber and sat back down in her seat. "You came back once," she said softly. "When you served the Emperor Reborn, you came back. Come back, Luke."

"This is ridiculous," Kyp said. "Don't we all wish we'd finished off Caedus before he burned Kashyyyk and all his other crimes? Now here's another Sith Lord, weak from battle, and we're going to just sit down?"

Kyp ignited his lightsaber and swung at Luke. And Lord Luke simply was not there.

Lord Luke merged into the White Current and disappeared. He got up and walked to the back of the shuttle, and waited for everyone to stop looking for him. Eventually, they docked on a ship. Lord Luke waited patiently for the ship to clear the combat zone and return to port. Still invisible, he left on another shuttle, down to a planet. He created a disguise for himself out of White Current illusions, and expropriated a small, fast yacht. But he did not go to Sith-ta. He went to the Great Machine. To try again.

The trailing edge of the memory swam before Mara's eyes and they both came out of it. Lord Luke sighed and made motions with his face as if wanting to rub his eyes.

"You're not Luke," Mara whispered. "I can't believe you can claim to be Luke and say something like that to Leia."

"You'll remember the alternative was dueling her with a lightsaber," Lord Luke said in the same weary tone as in the vision. "The reaction was automatic. In the court of Queen Dije I got used to playing the game of threat and counterthreat. It's part of the Sith culture. You have no idea what it's like in the Sith court."

"Hey, it's me, remember? Mara? The Emperor's Hand? I was a member of Palpatine's court."

"And how many actual Sith were in Palpatine's court?" Lord Luke replied. "Palpatine was of the tradition of only-two. You had only one rival. Vader. No one else was any kind of threat to you."

"He was enough," Mara grumbled. "And there were plenty of political threats. Backstabbers of every kind. Poisoners. Gossips. Everyone from Black Sun crime lords to old aristocracy and idle rich of a thousand worlds to the corrupt generals who were afraid I'd be at their door next, all the way down to the courtesans. Most of whom thought I was one of them. Which is what the people outside the inner circle were supposed to think."

It was Mara's memories that flashed through the air between them then. Palpatine with his glowing yellow eyes, teaching his young apprentice her last lesson before turning her loose in his Court: how to pass for a courtesan.

Mara closed down their mental link before Lord Luke got much of a glimpse. "I've never shared even that much with the real Luke," Mara said. "And I never will."

"He—" Lord Luke began.

"Can it, Sith," Mara snarled. "Don't you sit there so smug and give me that patient look and tell me how to relate to Luke. You're only alive because whoever created you must have him, and I'm going to find out who they are, and where they've taken him!"

Lord Luke leaned back in the chair, away from the waves of Mara's anger. "Please don't be angry," Lord Luke whispered. "That leads—"

"And don't lecture me about the dark side, Sith Lord!" Mara snapped. The urge to physical violence was nearly overwhelming, but Mara contained it. One of the first rules of conducting an interrogation was never to lose control. Palpatine had had Imperial Intelligence train her, and he had also trained her himself. Mara had never achieved the dangerous, icy calm of Vader, but she had aspired to it. And still did, in this context.

Another of the rules was that one did not punish a co-operative subject. And Mara could still feel the turbulent, racing pulsebeat of Lord Luke's surface and deeper thoughts through the Force, showing he was still totally open to her. Mara took a calming breath, and returned her voice to a softer tone. "Alright. Next layer."

She reached into his mind and peeled back the next cap. There was nothing underneath, just more of the burned out nothingness of a mind-rub.

"What do you see?" Lord Luke whispered. "Can you see it's me?"

Mara sighed. She shook her head slightly, but decided to go along with his delusion and see where it led. She controlled her desire to lash out at him, and to remind him that she did not believe him. That would not serve her purpose. "I can see that all of your memory caps were placed by the same person. The earliest one, the deepest layer, feels a little different structurally, but still the same person. Perhaps less experienced then."

"Yes," Lord Luke said. "She was not yet the Queen then. I wish Queen Dije had not capped the memory of decided not to try to kill Caedus myself next time. It would have saved me making the same mistake twice. I came to that conclusion again anyway. Jaina has to do it."

A memory flashed between them, not one of the capped ones, just an ordinary memory brought to mind by thinking of Jaina's task in killing Darth Caedus. If anything about Lord Luke's multi-timelines memories could be called ordinary.

It was dark beyond transparisteel windows on some benighted rock out in the galactic backbeyond. A group of Jedi stood around talking.

Jaina said, "The Vong believed that twins bend fate around them. And that they always have to fight. The stronger one kills the weaker one. It's destiny."

"I remember that story," Luke said. He looked a little older than Mara's Luke, but not nearly as old as Lord Luke, and did not have Sith tattoos. "And then the stronger one becomes a god. But didn't you already become a Vong goddess?"

Jaina made a face. "Yun-Harla. Was a covert ops gambit, as you well know."

Luke nodded. "I can see why that stuck with you. But it's not an idea I'm eager to encourage." Luke glanced sidelong at Leia.

Jaina followed his eyes and saw her mother's mouth quirk in a smile of irony that had no real humor behind it.

The memory rippled.

Mara saw events on the same planet, at a much later time. Ben, in his mid teens, sat with Ongreya, who was wearing her Psy-Healer hat. What passed for day had come to the asteroid, and the rocky landscape beyond the window glowed with a light that was both dim and harsh, with the razor-sharp shadows of space.

"We will continue later," Ongreya said. "It is time for the demonstration. I am turning off the Psy-Healer subcast for now. But I'm leaving on the Jedi subcast." Ongreya worked some controls in the holo recording and transmitting equipment in her hat. "This will be something special for my Jedi show audience."

She and Ben walked to a large hall where many Jedi were already gathered. Ongreya took a seat in the front of the crowd and began her patter, a filler commentary meant to cover that fact that she was transmitting nothing much of interest yet, and to give her audience time to hear the distinctive tone of the Jedi subcast – a musical chord played over the sound of a lightsaber igniting, which had never been more appropriate than today – and get to their holo setups and settle in the watch the show. Of course many people would watch the recorded, edited version later from Ongreya's site on the Hobgoblin, but a large portion of a subcasting audience loved the real-time aspect.

Luke and Jaina came out on the demonstration floor. Jaina looked like she wanted to sink into the floor. Luke looked like he was barely containing himself from bouncing on his heals in an undignified manner.

"My fellow Jedi," Luke began. He did not pitch his voice to carry over the crowd; he was the Grand Master, and he expected everyone to stop talking and listen to him. "It has been our custom since the foundation of the New Jedi Order that those who have knowledge share it with other Jedi. Jaina has a hard-won skill: the ability to defeat a Dark Lord of the Sith. This is a skill I hope neither she nor any of the rest of you ever need again. But it is not one that should be allowed to rust away. The Jedi may need it again someday."

Jaina's lips thinned. She looked grim, but not like a dour-handed warrior ready to execute Dark Lords on command. More like, she heard Luke's words as a rebuke, as if she had tried to forget her skill as soon as Caedus was defeated, and this demonstration was the only practice Luke had convinced her to do.

"This is a fighting art Jaina learned from the Mandalore," Luke said. There was a bit of crowd noise at that; apparently not everyone had been in the know. "This demonstration, of course, is not going to be enough to actually fully teach any of you to practice this fighting style, but it will be enough for you to see if you might have an interest in learning it."

Luke brought out two small objects. "To simulate the conditions of actual combat, we'll start out by demonstrating two Force techniques, which will give each of us a disadvantage to work with, but to level the playing field it will be the same disadvantage."

Jaina squinted at Luke. This was not part of what he had discussed with her.

"These are batteries," Luke said. He tossed one high in the air and zapped it with Force-lighting, and it blew up spectacularly. Several of the Jedi in the front row ducked. Ongreya, long trained in habits of keeping a level head – literally, so that the camera on her hat would not wobble – stayed stock still.

"How the—" someone in the audience exclaimed.

Jaina spoke over whoever it was. "What was that supposed to be? To simulate conditions of actual combat?"

"That was the battery pack of the type of sniper rifle you favor, Jaina. You will be fighting with your left hand."

"Hey! I never said I'd—"

"And so will I," Luke said. "If you can demonstrate shatterpoint." He held up the other battery on his palm.

"I don't get it," Jaina said. "The shatterpoint technique will just make the object crumble. It won't blow up like that."

"Just shatter it," Luke directed.

Jaina shrugged. "OK." She inhaled, focused down, extended a hand… and the battery resting on Luke's palm cracked open. He tossed it aside. "Very good. That was the kind of battery that powers my artificial hand. Now we're even."

"I don't think I like this," Jaina grumbled.

"Too bad," Luke said, and immediately swept out an attack. The lightsaber was activated and in his left hand before anyone noticed the match start.

Jaina was a half a second behind, and had to dodge with a Force-leap before she got her own lightsaber around to block.

They traded blows, the flashing swords buzzing and sizzling as they clashed again and again. "Is that all you've got?" Luke mocked. Jaina was mostly fighting defensively, in the classic Jedi style. "Show me your Mando face, Jaina."

For a moment, she got that look on her face, the deadly serious, seriously deadly look. She attacked with a flurry of blows, and drove Luke back. Then she speeded up even more, and surprised a word out of Luke that none of his students had known he knew. He blocked all her blows, barely, but had no time or room to counterattack.

Then Jaina reverted to the classic Jedi dueling mode, waiting for her opponent to strike. Luke caught his breath and obliged with a few clever moves, none quite clever enough. Luke circled around, and Jaina waited patiently for him to attack again.

To break the annoying stalement, Luke eventually attacked, combining a sudden jump with a Force-push and zig-zagging attack meant to confuse the defender about where the tip of the blade was about to be. Jaina countered it easily, and riposted at what seemed like about half speed from her earlier flurry.

They exchanged classic fencing attacks, tried some standard tricks, all the while circling. After about a minute, Luke goaded, "Stop toying with me!"

"If you insist," Jaina said. Then her Mandalorian look fixed on her face and stayed, and she rushed Luke with a series of attacks that left him no time to attack and no room to maneuver. As relentless as a droideka, Jaina gradually drove him right to the wall.

But that did not trap him. He jumped straight up, balled up and turned in the air and kicked off the ceiling, and came down with his blade pointed down at Jaina.

Instead of dodging, Jaina double-knocked the oncoming blade, first one direction and then in the direction of the counter, so that the second blow pushed it in the same direction its wielder was trying to move it to bring it back in line from the first blow. It was a standard technique, and one Luke himself had once used in his battle with Vader on Bespin. But it was successful, due to the total effort behind it and the unexpectedness of trying that technique instead of getting out of the way. Because deciding not to dodge meant that Luke literally fell on her, and they both went down in a tangle of arms and legs.

Somehow Jaina turned that to her advantage, and got her knee under Luke's back, and trapped his legs, and brought her saber around to hold it at his throat.

Luke thought it would be easy to get out of that danger by simply bending farther backwards, to give himself enough time to get his own lightsaber around. But he heard something pop in his back and the breath went out of him. He could not get his sword around in time and the glowing length of Jaina's blade was coming down toward his eyes.

He tried to say, I yield, and found he had no breath. Taking a breath would take too much time. He shouted it in the Force, mind to mind, and everyone flinched as they heard it. Even Ongreya.

Jaina backed her saber off, hesitated a moment to be sure the fight was really over, and let him slide off of her knee to the ground. She closed down the lightsaber, passed it to her right hand and reattached it to her belt, panting and swearing and calling for ice. In that last desperate moment as Luke tried to get his blade in between hers and his face, he had cut her on the shoulder and had not even noticed.

No one paid attention to Jaina's words, though, as Luke finally got his breath and shouted, "I can't feel my legs! I do still have legs, don't I?"

The crowd surged forward. Ongreya elbowed someone out of the way to stay in the front.

"You have legs," someone in the crowd reassured Luke.

"Agh. I'm not as bendable as I used to be."

Jaina came over to him. "Need a hand up?"

"I don't think that's a good idea," Luke said. "I still can't feel my legs."

A Jedi healer knelt beside Luke and put a hand on his torso, concentrating briefly. "Bracing stretcher!"

"I'm going into a healing trance," Luke said, and left consciousness behind.

The walls wavered. No longer the asteroid base, now it was full day on Coruscant.

Mara stared at Lord Luke.

After a moment, she asked, "So how did that turn out?"

"That universe turned out well. Darth Caedus was dead, Ben was alive, I was still a Jedi Master and did not turn to the Dark Side again. I should have left it alone. Queen Dije was right, I should have stopped. I should have stopped with that one, and not gone back to the Great Machine to try to make everything perfect. I see now that I can't ever have perfect. I can only have good enough. That's the result I have to put back. Caedus dead, Ben alive, me a Jedi. I can't have anything else. I started using the Great Machine to save Ben, and I did. He was supposed to die on Caedus's ship. I stopped it from happening. But then I had to save him again, a few years later. And that was when I started trying to stop Caedus before he even started. When I went back in time and tried to prevent Caedus – Jacen – from ever being born."

"How did you do that?" Mara asked.

"Capped my own memory. I don't know how. That shouldn't be possible."

"Whatever you did, there isn't a memory cap bearing a male signature in here," Mara said. "Your memory of what? I don't get how a memory could cause Jacen to be born or not be born."

"My memory of the conversation – or just part of the conversation – that I had with Ben—with Obi-Wan's ghost on Dagobah. I kept myself from knowing that Leia was my sister. She never had Jacen because she never married Han."

Mara made a face. "You married Leia?"

"It was a paradise. For them. I had to live with the knowledge. I still don't understand that part. How could I have known and not known at the same time?" Lord Luke sighed. "And somehow I ended up with a double set of memories. From the me who married her and the me who watched."

A memory flashed through Lord Luke's mind. A memory of Luke and Leia. And just possibly, Ani and Akbar in potentia. Night, shimmersilk, Leia's perfume, starlight and the sounds of a forest… the Force singing with the sudden presence of new life.

Lord Luke lurched off the chair to his knees, bending forward.

"Oh, no you don't," Mara said, grabbing him by the hair and chin, tipping his head back and forcing his jaw closed. "Don't mess up my floor, Lord Luke. Control your stomach! Draw on the Force! Get in control of your body."

Lord Luke choked and struggled for a second, and got shocked by the shock cord. He made several rapid coughs, and then his eyes went vacant for a moment as he did as Mara said, and reached out to the Force to keep himself from vomiting. After about ten seconds, Mara released him, and he drew in air and coughed spasmodically for the next few minutes.

Mara watched him coldly until his breathing returned to normal. She did not offer him water. Finally, she asked, "So obviously something must have gone wrong with that universe, since you changed it again." Her tone was skeptical. Clearly, she did not believe he could really travel in time. "You did prevent the rise of this Darth Caedus person you keep talking about, didn't you?"

"Yes," Lord Luke replied. His voice was rough, but it grew more normal as he went on. "But then we lost the Vong War. All life in the galaxy came to an end. All life as we know it, anyway. Only Vonglife survived. I had to go back again and undo what I'd done. Jacen was necessary. What happened to him in the war made him able to stop the war before it resulted in galaxy-wide genocide. And it also caused him to become Darth Caedus. The two things were inseparable. I tried so many times. To get it all to come out right. To save him." Lord Luke shook his head. He added softly, "And myself. And make it all perfect. I'm actually glad that preventing Han and Leia's marriage didn't turn out to be the answer. Because then I would never have married you."

Mara tamped down her sudden anger. She did not remind Lord Luke again that she did not believe him, although she was sure he could feel it in the Force. "So, let me get this straight. In the good enough universe, Jaina kills her twin brother, and it's OK because Ben is alright?"

"I have to find a universe I can live with," Lord Luke said. "Because when too many things happen, either the universe goes wrong or I do. I can't tell you how many times I've fallen. And I've become too powerful to just let that be. I've seen how the universe turns out when I assume Darth Caedus's throne. I even did it on purpose one, to give that timeline solidity and… why would I do that? I think I've almost got it. Why I'm here."

Mara let him think. But after a few minutes he shook his head. "It's gone again. I think this is normal. I usually have gaps in my mind after a time shift. I think it's getting worse every time. Queen Dije says I'm a danger to the universe. That I'm wearing holes in the fabric of the space-time continuum. She told me if I used the Great Machine one more time she would declare me an outlaw from the Queen's Justice and said Kerruke's twins to hunt me down."

Mara made a noncommittal noise. It was clear that Lord Luke believed he was a time traveler as sincerely as he believed he was Luke. If he really could travel in time as he said, it was possible that he really was Luke. Some other Luke from some other time. Not a clone. But still not her Luke.

Was she starting to believe him? No, Mara told herself. I'm just going along with his story to draw him out. That's an old interrogator's trick. It doesn't mean anything.

"So what about the universe where you broke your back trying to turn yourself into a Nadwallian pretzel."

"Hmm? Oh. I was fine, of course. Besides the healing trance, we had a fully equipped medbay at the hidden base."

Another memory swam up out of lace-textured ravels of his hole-filled mind.

A white room, a table-bed, blinking lights, a sharp antiseptic smell: the medical facility at the Jedi base.

Jaina walked in, her movements stiff, but with emotional awkwardness, not with post-combat pain; she had recovered long before he did. She stood farther away from the hospital bed than family usually stood. "Um, how are you?"

"Well on my way to a full recovery," Luke said, his tone resonating with Jedi peace. "It's a great relief to me to know that I'm no longer the galaxy's most accomplished lightsaber duelist."

"Well, I don't know about that," Jaina said.

"No longer the best, then," Luke said, flicking his fingers in a lazily dismissive gesture.

"You seem awfully calm about that," Jaina said.

"If I didn't make myself clear, then let me clarify. I feel better knowing you could take me if you had to. I've been hanging by a thread since Mara's death, Jaina. You know that. If I could have spared you having to kill your own twin I would have. But only you could do it with sheer willpower, and not overwhelming power in the Force. I've seen every future that begins with me reaching for the power I dare not touch, and they all end badly." Luke sighed. "With Caedus gone, it is now absolutely certain that Darth Vengeus will never rise. But there is still the awful possibility of Lord Luke. I've seen him. I've been him. The visions I sent Darth Caedus, of me sitting on his throne, I could never have pulled off if it were not a real future with a real possibility of happening. I've been living in that future, living in those visions. Living Lord Luke. I'm glad to know someone could stop him if it becomes necessary."

The memory ended abruptly. Whatever response Jaina had made, Mara did not see it.

Lord Luke suddenly awoke to a vibrant clarity. His mind knitted together. "That's it! Visions! That's what I'm here to do!"

"What?" asked Mara.

"I'm here to do nothing!" Lord Luke laughed. "All this power, all the time I've spent accumulating it, all to not use it. All to make myself the focus of Caedus's visions, his nemesis, his obsession, to the point where he overlooks Jaina as a threat. All so Jaina can kill him."

Lord Luke relaxed against the chair, sliding down and leaning his head against the top of the backrest. Which must have been less comfortable than it looked, since his hands were still bound behind him. "I can have the good enough universe back. That must be what I'm here to do. Put it all back."

His relief turned to sudden despair. He wept openly.

"What?" Mara asked. "What is it?"

"That means I can't save you! That's what a perfect universe would have in it! Not just Caedus dead, and Ben alright, and me alright, but you too!"

Lord Luke's tears turned to sobs, then to screams. Dark power stirred around him, and his shields started to flicker back on.

"Get ahold of yourself!" Mara yelled. This time she gave in to the impulse to slap him.

He stopped making so much noise, but he had not let go of the Force, and it was most definitely the Dark Side flowing. Mara recognized the taste of it, and the raw power; only in this way did short, slight, high-voiced Luke bear any family resemblance to Lord Vader.

She slapped his face again, hard. "Stop it! Stop it, Luke!"

The sudden use of his name, sans title, brought him up short. His shields went down again, and his eyes widened with hope. "You believe me?" he whispered.

"Does it matter?" Mara yelled. She grabbed his upper arms and shook him. The back of the chair banged against the desk behind it. "I'm right here! Right now! Stop acting like I just died!"

"Of course," he whispered, but his memories were replaying her death. And with it, his grief, his anger, his hatred of Caedus, his desire for vengeance, and the well-worn path down to the Dark Side of the Force.

Mara grabbed him in the most vulnerable place and twisted.

"Ow!"

"You only think what I allow you to think," Mara snarled. "You remember what I tell you to remember. You feel what I tell you to feel. And you leave the Dark Side the Kessel alone."

"Yes, anything! Anything you want!"

Suddenly there was another presence in the room. It had been so similar to Lord Luke's own Force-presence that neither of them had noticed its approach.

The newcomer said, "Is this what you do when I'm gone? Play Sith pain games with a body double of me?"

"Luke!" Mara shrieked. She ran to him to embrace him, but the young, tattoo-free Luke backed away from her.

Lord Luke stammered, "There's not – there isn't – there aren't supposed to be two of me!"

Then his memories cascaded.

Since he was still open and shieldless, both Mara and Luke saw the jumble of memories speeding past. The only coherent thought they caught was that Lord Luke realized how he could have capped his own memory on Dagobah, since he did it to another version of himself. And that he must have become two people when he popped into a universe in which he had already died by the time period that he arrived in.

Mara stepped forward toward the younger Luke again, holding out her arms. "I thought something had happened to you! I thought you'd been kidnapped and cloned!"

"So you revert on the spot to being the Emperor's Hand?" Luke accused.

"I was only trying to find out what had happened to you! So I could come save you again!"

"Nothing happened to me," just plain Luke said. "Unless you count some odd looks I got when I put down at the Temple and switched to an aircar to come over here. Everybody can feel him, you know. And they probably think he's me."

"What?" Mara asked.

"I felt his pain all the way over at Gyndine! That's why I came back early. He broadcasts like a Holonet satellite!"

"He—he is grieving for me," Mara said. "He thinks he's a time traveler, and that I'm dead where he comes from."

"I got that, thanks. Along with some remarkable fights and a few other things the SVN would have loved to subcast. If he's not a clone, he certainly thinks on the same wavelength as I do. I've seen as much of his memories as you have. And I know you were torturing him. Physically. Are you or are you not a Jedi?"

"Luke," Mara pleaded.

"Answer the question, Mara," Luke grated.

"Stop," said Lord Luke. He was standing at their shoulders, hands out. He had gotten out of the restraints with such a miniscule amount of the power he wielded that neither Mara nor Luke had noticed Lord Luke drawing on the Force.

"What th—" Mara rounded on Lord Luke and reached for his neck. Lord Luke's shields went up and he surrounded himself with a staggering amount of power. Mara's hands hit a wall and bounced off, as if he had created a ship's shields around himself, not just mental shields. The sudden cutoff of the flow of memories from Lord Luke was almost a physical silence.

Lord Luke said, "I'm not here to cause a problem between you. Look, self. Ten years from now you'll give anything to have Mara back for even a tiny moment. Savor the time you have left. It's rare and precious."

"You and your time travel we'll discuss later. With some cooler heads. At the Temple."

"No," said Lord Luke. "I can't let you take me there. I already saw how that turned out. In another timeline, I've already been here once. Mara took me to the Master's Council, and everyone saw me. And Jacen learned of my existence. And so he didn't believe the visions when he saw them, later, as Caedus. He can't be allowed to know I exist. So no one but you two must see me. We can't defeat Caedus any other way and still prevent… me… you, whoever we become… from turning."

"But," Mara protested. "You are a Dark Lord of the Sith. Your tattoos say it, you admitted it, and I felt you call the Dark Side. Why would you care about that?"

Lord Luke started to sigh, and coughed again. "In the court of the Queen, a person can be both a Jedi and a Sith. Queen Dije is herself. But there are Sith and then there are Sith. I don't mind being this kind. The kind who are courtiers of the Queen. I have power, and purpose, and a home there, although it's closed to me now. But I must be prevented from falling far enough to try to rule the galaxy. Because if I do, I'll succeed. I've already done it. More than once."

Just plain Luke said, "I think he's telling the truth."

Mara said, "Of course he is. The truth as he knows it. But just because he's not lying doesn't mean he's really a time traveler."

"Convincing someone as powerful as he is that he's living a life that's not really there, over and over again, would take more power than I can imagine," said Luke. "And can't you tell that the memory caps and the burned out areas are the only directly manipulated parts? I could tell that in the ship on the way to Coruscant. You've been right here. Couldn't you see it?"

"No," Mara said. "But I thought he was part of a plot to get at you. But clearly, nothing happened to you at Gyndine. I'm not sure anymore."

"You believe me?" Lord Luke asked Luke.

"Maybe," said Luke. "The three of us will continue going through your memories. But first, go get yourself some water. You're so thirsty it's making ME hurt. And please go put on some clothes! Borrow some of mine," Luke said practically. "Since I can see yours are ruined. Those lightsaber burns are going to leave scars if you don't do something about them."

"I'll add them to my collection," said Lord Luke. "And thank you. I gratefully accept your generous offer." He headed to the closet at once, before he even went into the kitchen.

"Luke," Mara began.

"Not now," Luke said. "You're right, we have to figure out this puzzle first. You will continue to pop his memory caps. Not the earliest one, though. And you will absolutely not engage in Imperial tactics!"

"I thought you were in danger."

"You thought I was in danger, and you head straight for the most evil things you ever did as the Emperor's Hand. A decade from now, he – I – turn to the Dark Side out of grief for you. Maybe the Old Order was right. To forbid marriage. And love. And attachment."

"You can't mean that."

"I don't know. I just know I'd rather really be kidnapped by Sith cloners that see you fall."

"Oh. Oh, Luke, I'm sorry. But I haven't fallen."

"Not yet," Luke said. "But evil acts leave you open to the Dark Side. You know that."

"I'm sorry. I love you."

This time he let her hug him close. They stayed like that until Lord Luke came out wearing an enveloping Jedi robe over nondescript old street wear and headed for the kitchen.

Luke said, "Maybe you'd better get dressed, too, Mara. It's the middle of the afternoon, after all."

"Hmm? Oh." Mara looked down at herself. She had forgotten she was still in her pajamas.

The three of them met back up and drifted by mutual distaste to the conversation circle in the outer room, out of sight of the desk with the shock cord still lying limply beside it.

"Now," said Luke, "Mara is going to keep sifting your memories. And I'm going to keep watching. And you are going to do something to make sure only she and I can hear you, because if you're serious about trying to keep your existence a secret, you'd better stop broadcasting to every Force-user between here and the Outer Rim."

"Oh," said Lord Luke.

"A master of understatement as well as of the Force, I see," said Mara. "Alright, Sith-boy, you heard the Master. Open up. I'm going digging."

End of part 2


	3. Chapter 3

The Final Iteration

Part 3: Inner Layers

"Of course, that's it. Visions. This is all about visions. Visions with weight. Visions with the taste of reality. Visions Darth Caedus is going to have of Lord Luke's life. Visions that will drive him to focus on me obsessively, to the point of not noticing the real assassin… Jaina." Lord Luke laughed bitterly. "To live a thousand years, to become the most powerful Jedi, and the most powerful Sith Lord who ever lived, all to NOT go up against Darth Caedus. All to direct his visions. Spending everything, from my soul to my son, to convince him that they're true. All so someone else can kill him."

For a few moments, the three of them sat in silence. Except for the sounds of air traffic outside in Coruscant's crowded skies.

Then, low and dangerous, the young Luke asked, "What do you mean, 'spending my son'?"

"Oh. No, he lives. He's alright. He becomes a great Jedi. But there will come a time when you have to choose to send him someplace where Darth Caedus knows he's going to be, because if you don't, Caedus will know that you're seeing the same visions he is and he might come to suspect what you're doing. You have to choose that risk to stop Caedus. WE have to choose it," Lord Luke amended. "Even though I started all this trying to save Ben."

"I would never deliberately put Ben in harm's way," said the young Luke.

"You will. You'll have to. To protect the visions, the plan, the future."

"Sources and methods," Mara muttered.

"Yes," said Lord Luke. "It is in fact an intelligence operation. A disinformation campaign, in fact. Unfortunately, you won't be there to help us run it."

"Because I'm going to be dead?" Mara sneered.

"Yes," Lord Luke growled. "I've tried so many times to stop it. I can't. Something else always goes wrong."

"What?" asked Luke.

Lord Luke remembered…

Luke and Mara, both old and white-haired, sitting at a battered metal table. Luke wore grungy grey spacer's coveralls, and Mara wore an equally disreputable dust-colored civilian outfit.

Mara said, "Don't you think it's time we talked about stopping him?"

"Caedus? I've been talking about stopping him for decades. In the beginning, when he was weak enough to stop, you kept saying he was just having a bad affair, and he'd get over it. By the time it was obvious what he'd become…"

"Not Caedus. Caedus is dead, hadn't you heard?"

"No! When did this happen?"

"A few weeks ago, apparently. Our news network isn't the same as it used to be."

Luke snorted. "Tell me about it. But who, then?"

"Darth Soldati."

"Oh, no. No, Mara. You're wrong."

"Look, Luke, you were right about Caedus. What happened is my fault. I'm the one who insisted Jacen was good for Ben. He was making him more obedient and stronger in the Force. Making a man of him. That's what I thought. You saw it from the beginning, and I didn't see it. I insisted you let Ben stay with Jacen. It's my fault he turned him."

"He hasn't turned. He's just following a leader, someone he thinks is doing more good than harm to the galaxy, even with all the evils he's committed. He just sees the good aspects more than the bad, is all. If Caedus is dead, then Ben will come back to the good side on his own. Just like you did after the death of the Emperor."

Mara shook her head. "Darth Soldati declared himself Emperor right after Caedus's death. No one can confirm it, but our observers on Coruscant suspect Soldati killed him. It's the old story of the Sith, Luke. The pupil betrays the master and takes his place."

"Not Ben." There was a long pause. "Alright. Assuming you're right, how can you be so ready to jump from 'Soldati is the Master Sith now' to 'stop Soldati'? What happened to 'save Ben'?"

"Do you really think you can? He's been at Caedus's side for thirty years."

"I know I'm out of practice. And I failed with Jacen. But I used to be pretty good with the Sith Lords. I have to at least try."

Mara sighed and nodded. "I suppose I should have expected that. Alright, Luke. Go and save Ben, if you can. Prepare your plan carefully." She squeezed his hand. "May the Force be with you."

The younger Mara got up and paced slowly back and forth behind Lord Luke as he sat on one of the couches in the conversation circle in the outer chamber of Luke and Mara's apartment on Coruscant.

"What happened?" she finally asked.

"You didn't die. Darth Caedus didn't kill you. And so Ben stayed with him, and stayed with the Galactic Alliance Guard, and learned to torture and assassinate and all the things the Emperor taught you. Save one. Luckily, he got to wear a nifty uniform and everyone knew who and what he really was."

Mara made a face. Both Lukes could feel her regret at having shared something with Lord Luke, but the younger Luke did not know what that was. He refrained from prying, though. Luke always gave Mara her mental space. There were so many things she never shared, mostly about her past as the Emperor's Hand. In return, she didn't insist he talk about his feelings and past, either, about those things he did not wish to share; Mara had guessed long ago that at least part of that had to do with Leia, but she never asked him about it.

"That's something you'll regret, in time," Lord Luke said.

"What?" asked Mara.

"I meant Luke will regret it. Regret not getting to know the whole you, right down to the bones. You'll keep being embarrassed to share with each other right up until it's too late."

Luke said, "We do share our whole selves. We formed a kind of oneness when we invaded that fortress together."

"In combat," Lord Luke said. "I'm talking about time for reflection."

Mara said, "Right now we only want to know the whole you. It's time to take the lid off whatever is underneath your next memory cap."

Lord Luke nodded. "Alright. Go ahead."


	4. Chapter 4

The Final Iteration

Part 4

Jacen ysalimiri Imperial interrogator droid pain humiliation sudden horror. Jacen peeling back Luke's mind without the aid of the Force, with no visions and no merging and certainly no co-operation from Luke. Peeling it back all the way to the most hidden pieces, which Luke hid even from himself, thoughts and feelings about Jacen's mother for the sake of pity STOP!

Meant to be a mind-shout, but the rooms on all sides of this windowless cube were packed with ysalimiri, and no mind-shouting was possible. "Always with you it cannot be done," the memory of Yoda sighing long ago, an echo of an echo in a mind older even that Yoda's, remembering a memory. But the Force did not exist in Jacen's torture chamber. A special prison to hold a Jedi Master, not only ringed with ysalimiri, but with heavy chains bolted to steel beams sunk deep into the Coruscanti bedrock, far, far below Jacen's fortress. The watch was kept by the never-tiring eyes of droids.

It was chill, but Lord Luke sweated in pain. Wanted to ask, what do you want? But he knew; there was only one reason for Jacen to keep coming here, week after week. For Jacen's pleasure. What Jacen wanted was to see him suffer. A thousand years ago – and about four years ago, in another timeline – Lord Luke had rocked this child to sleep in his arms, singing. Singing badly, but little Jacen had not minded.

"Jacen," Lord Luke whispered.

"I am Darth Caedus!" Jacen shrieked.

A moment later Lord Luke shrieked too, as Jacen did something to him that Luke had never even let Mara do.

Then Jacen was talking on his commlink. Lord Luke had not heard the discreet beep over his own screams. Jacen hurried away. Leaving an object wedged painfully inside Lord Luke.

Lord Luke's head swam, and he thought he was hallucinating when a group of four Imperial Stormtroopers burst into the chamber.

"Sithspit," swore one of the troopers, decidedly nonmilitary language. No trooper in Empire would ever have used an epithet that referred to the feared Darth Vader, Dark Lord of the Sith.

"Will you look at this? Let's get this thing out of him." That was a woman's voice, and the Empire had never had female stormtroopers.

Confused and weak, Lord Luke did not even try to get up when they shot through his chains. The troopers carried him into the corridor, and two full turnings later, the ysalimir field end and the Force was with him again.

He was tempted to go right into a healing trance, but his strange rescuers might need his help. He pulled the Force to him and floated, taking the burden off of the troopers. They exclaimed in startlement, but then they were suddenly busy shooting at Galactic Alliance Guard soldiers. Lord Luke wished for his lightsaber, so he could be of use in the fight.

Then he remembered that he was also a Dark Lord of the Sith. He reached out to the enemies' power packs and drained them. Their blasters ceased to fire.

He did not remember much after that until he came awake in a military bedroll that smelled like it had been in storage for decades. Military surplus, perhaps. Like the armor?

He sat up rubbing his eyes. He was in a small private room with a water bottle next to the sleeping bag. He stretched. He was very stiff; he had been in a healing trance for a long time. He chugged the bottle and made his way into a hallway. He heard people talking, and walked in that direction.

He was wearing somebody else's grey spacer's coveralls, slightly too big, and no shoes. He walked into what was obviously a military briefing. Metal camp chairs supported a mostly human, mostly male audience that did not rustle much. They had Imperial uniforms, but there was something wrong with most of them. A lot of slightly mismatched trousers, as if replaced with similar colored pants from civilian stores. A wide assortment of boots and athletic shoes. The gold flash of a nonregulation woman's hairclip.

The speaker stopped with Lord Luke dragged himself in from the hallway. "Our last rescuee is awake, I see," the man in Colonel's attire said. He had one of the most complete uniforms in the room, but civilian shoes.

Luke glanced at the diagrams behind the Colonel. "Looks like you're planning an attack with X-Wing fighters. That's an unusual choice for Imperials. You are Imperials, right?"

"We are Imperial loyalists. Some of us did not approve of the Empire's union with the New Republic to create the Galactic Alliance."

"Well, Imperials or whatever, if you're working to overthrow Jacen, you have my support. And my gratitude, for getting me out of there. I'd like to volunteer."

"You just woke up from a coma," objected the Colonel.

"It wasn't a coma, it was a Jedi healing trance," Lord Luke said. "I'm fine now. Or I will be, as soon as I eat and so forth. Your pilots are probably trained in TIEs, and if I don't miss my guess, you're having to equip yourselves outside channels. Because you're a resistance group. Welcome to the Rebellion."

"Hardly," the Colonel said. "We mean to see Admiral Pellaeon returned from that ridiculous 'retirement' and installed at head of state. The Galactic Alliance is fatally flawed, but we believe a new Empire can grow from it."

"Fine, fine. Pellaeon's a great guy, I like him. Bygones by bygones and all that. I've been in a few committee meetings with him, and he seems to be able to lead in a civilian context too. As long as you help me kill Jacen. Or if you have a plan, then let me help you kill Jacen. Whichever, as long as he dies."

"I understand your need for revenge, old fellow, really I do. I've spoken with several of the survivors we rescued from the GAG special interrogation wing. But our medical officer is better qualified to advise you on your recovery."

Lord Luke inhaled to argue, and someone else, a TIE fighter pilot according to his black uniform, turned around from the front row and said, "Dogfighting's no place for an old geezer, even if you are all better."

Lord Luke smiled a little and said, "I may be getting old, but I'm still the best hand with an X-wing fighter you're ever likely to recruit."

The Colonel tried to shuffle him off again. "We do appreciate your offer to volunteer, and we are looking for more help in a variety of areas. After all this is over, I'll assign someone to work with you in figuring out what skills you have that we could use. But right now we are four hours from mission, and we need to finish our briefing."

"You have no idea who I am, do you," Lord Luke sneered. "And here I imagined I might have been the object of your rescue. Get the famous ex-Rebel working for the Imperial resistance, great propaganda coup. Even better if he can bring the rest of the Order in with him. Too bad it doesn't work that way, or I would have had enough of a chance against Jacen to bring him down, instead of getting myself captured. Being the head of the Order is just a lot of damn paperwork, they don't actually follow me into battle if they don't agree with me. They're still hung up on neutrality and not interfering with government." Lord Luke snorted in derision at the rest of the Jedi.

"What order?" asked the Colonel.

"Huh. I used to have one of the most recognizable faces in the galaxy. From Imperial wanted posters." Lord Luke spotted some more chairs leaning against the wall, and used the Force to pull one to him, and then collapsed into it.

"What did you do?" asked the Colonel.

"Blew up the Death Star. The first one."

There was a feeling in the room as if everyone was holding his breath. Then the Colonel asked, "Luke Skywalker?"

"Yeah. You going to give me a damn X-wing or not?"

"Um. You realize this is an Imperial fighter squadron."

"Right now I don't care if you're the Lords of the Sith, as long as Jacen dies." Slowly, Lord Luke was tempted to add.

"Right. Morven, I believe we did have one extra fightercraft, did we not?"

"One, yes," the pit crew boss replied. "One is no good to anybody."

"I don't need a wingman," Lord Luke said. "A non-Force user would just slow me down."

The Colonel said, "As you wish. The major roles have already been assigned and practiced."

"Fine, whatever. Right now I just want a chance to kill a lot of people."

"Ah. Of course. Since you will have no wingman, stay out of the formation. Hang back, pick off stragglers."

"Sure. Sounds great. May the Force be with us."

A few hours later, Lord Luke was in his element at last: the cockpit of a fighter, skimming the outer atmosphere where the skies of Coruscant hung all about him in a perpetual red twilight, just below eternal night.

Prey came into his grasp. A wounded bird, fleeing the furball the Imperial pilots caused. Lord Luke did not care that he was merely mopping up in a less than important action, a distraction to draw off ships and attention from the real target. He was in battle, and the X-wing was his soul ship, an extension of his very self. He sighted and squeezed, and the target ship broke apart in a shower of golden sparks, beautiful, hot, and transient as the act of procreation.

Another ship came under his guns. Life was fleeting, vapor trails going down on the horizon. The scrap fell as shooting stars in the city skies.

Another. Another. Then he was done. Quietly, with only the faintest touch of irony, he whispered, "Long live Emperor Gilaad Pellaeon."


	5. Chapter 5

The Final Iteration

Part 5

"Now for the final memory cap," Mara said.

"Not that one," Luke and Lord Luke said as one.

The younger Luke blushed and his eyes darted between Lord Luke and Mara. "Ah—if we really have the same history right up until the time when he first used the Great Machine, which is still in the future in this year," the young Luke stammered, "then the innermost memory cap is the one that I have too. And I don't want to see in there."

"Well, I do," Mara said. "The oldest cap might be the one where we find out he's an evil Sith clone sent here to confuse us to death."

Lord Luke laughed. The younger Luke took a moment to decipher his other self's odd sense of humor, and then shook his head slightly.

Mara said to her husband, "We have to pop the final cap. It's the only way to be sure this all isn't some trick."

Luke sighed. "Alright. Go ahead." He squinted a little, bracing himself to see the memory he had dreaded for so long.

A cell.

Luke was in a cell. With cameras. And he was crazed. Drugged. Out of control. But still in control of the Force.

He fought Dije, and knocked her off her feet with a Force punch. He jumped on her and they wrestled.

Horrible dark slime dripped off his face onto young Dije's face, below him. No, not slime: purple tears.

And then Dije fought back. She used the Force lightning. Luke screamed and fell to the floor, curled up in pain, just as he had when the Emperor had shocked him with Force lightning. He writhed under the forked tongues of electric flame. Luke screamed and then passed out.

Dije won.

The vision ended.

Luke and Lord Luke both stood up, wide-eyed, staring at each other. "Dije won?" Luke asked.

"All this time," Lord Luke muttered. "All this time, I thought she… I thought I…"

"Me too," said Luke. "I thought—"

"That little bitch!" Lord Luke shrilled. He hurled a pillow across the room with the Force. It knocked over a crystalline knickknack, which broke against the floor with a tiny tinkly sound.

"No!" Luke objected. "She did cap our memory to protect us. She did! So we didn't actually—do it. We tried. She was protecting us from remembering the attempt. It's the same thing, just—"

"If we didn't rape her, then where in the name of the Sith did our son come from?"

"Oh. I don't know." Luke's surgically sculpted jaw hung slightly open, lips parted, blue eyes wide.

Lord Luke ground his teeth and hopped up and down. "I'll tell you where it came from. I remember the rest, now."

A memory flashed in the air, of a butler droid and a stack of plastic sample bags.

"She did it to us, you idiot. All that time. A thousand years of guilt. Thinking she was so noble for protecting us—me—at a time when a lesser soul would have collapsed in self-pity. Oh no, the conniving little—There is no curse in Ancient Sith vile enough for Queen Dije. I'm going to skin her and turn her skin inside out and put in on her backwards so her eye holes look out the wrong side of her head, and I'm going to make sure she's awake through the whole thing."

"L—" Even more shocked than before, Luke said, "Hey. Self. Luke. That's—evil."

"I'm a Dark Lord of the Sith, remember?" Lord Luke crowed. "But no. I wouldn't risk it. I'm already a fugitive from the Queen's Justice, for using the Great Machine again, though I can't for the life of me figure out how I did it. I can't remember how to get there, so how did I? Anyway, I can't just go walking into the Queen's presence now. My long home on Sith-ta is closed to me forever."

Luke turned to Mara. "Do mine. Do it now before I lose my nerve. I have to know. I have to know if my memories are the same as his. If he's really me from the future."

"Are you sure, Luke?" Mara asked.

Luke dropped his shields. He stood before her as open as Lord Luke was. His surface thoughts roiled with fear, but behind them was a clear light like summer sunbeams. His Force presence was completely unlike Lord Luke's, which was a bizarre mix of light and dark, and yet was still unmistakably Luke.

Mara reached carefully into Luke's mind. She did not shove in like she had done to Lord Luke, but followed careful paths and drifts, trying not to disturb anything or cause any pain.

She found Luke's one memory cap, and opened it gently.

Cell. Drugged. Aggression, desire, primitive emotions overwhelming. Dije, warm flesh beneath him, tears falling. Then pain. The lightning. Waking up on Dije's ship. Afraid, confused. The droid. The sample bags. Dozens, hundreds.

"How many children do I have?" Luke and Lord Luke asked in unison.

They both collapsed into chairs. Mara took Luke's hand, offering comfort. Luke briefly gave her a small smile, a mental pat on the hand, letting her know how much he appreciated her, and that it was all going to be alright.

No one tried to comfort Lord Luke. He pulled his borrowed Jedi robe right around himself like a cloak, muttering below his breath in Ancient Sith. He looked up at Luke, his face stiff as if to control weeping. "The Twins. The kriffing Twins. Kerruke's Twins. Did you know how rare twins are among the Sith? Not so rare in the Skywalker line. They're powerful, all the young Sith born to Dije's courtiers are powerful. Several are twins. They're all my children. Our children. All of them. All of them."

"Yes," Luke said. He seemed preternaturally calm, but that was only an effect of drawing on the Force. "I searched my feelings. I know it to be true."

"She deceived us. For years. Centuries, if you count all the timelines I've lived in. I know all those people. I've seen them grow from little babies to bitter old age, all the ones who didn't die young or flee Sith-ta for a better life—yeah right. Hundreds. Children, grandchildren, great grandchildren. I know them all, and I never guessed. Damn her to a life of unhoused wandering!" Lord Luke shook his head. "Actually, unhoused wandering is how the Jedi live the afterlife. It's a foolish old Sith curse, meaningless if you know the truth about the Force. Both sides of the Force."

"What did you expect of her?" Luke asked quietly.

"What? She was a teenager, in shock, in turmoil, just finding herself, not knowing whether to say Jedi or Sith, or victim or hero? Is that what you were going to say?" Lord Luke sneered. "We shouldn't expect perfect rationality? OK, fine, that might explain why she thought the memory cap was a good idea, but how do you explain the rest of it? How do you explain a thousand years of lies?"

"Actually, I wasn't going to say any of that," Luke said. "It's you who are still trying to convince yourself she had good motives. I think her motives were complex and contradictory, like the rest of her nature. You say you've lived in the court of Queen Dije in many timelines, in dozens of full lives. And in all that time, you never noticed that she's a Sith?"

Lord Luke tried to laugh, but it came out an odd 'ha' of emptiness, as if the exhalation drained him of all emotion, all expectation. "You mean, what should I have expected but a self-serving act of evil?"

"Something like that."

"But she did rescue us. She came for us, knowing the danger she was in."

"She did," agreed Luke. "And she swung back and forth between helping me and helping herself a dozen times in the days when she became a Jedi."

"And she avenged us. Not the Jedi way, but still, she cared for us deeply."

"I know that. But she cared for her people more. Didn't you see that?"

"Well… yes. Yes," Lord Luke agreed. "You barely know her, anymore. You lost touch with her during the Vong war. I've known her for centuries. Why could you see that when I couldn't?"

"Perhaps you didn't want to know. Somewhere deep down you had to suspect what she'd done. Dije told me about the radiation, about how most of her people became sterile because of the power sources in the downed Blockade satellites."

"We saved her race?" Lord Luke shook his head. "But how could she have foreseen that at 17? She hadn't started having real Force visions yet."

"No, but she did have Force promptings regularly, and she always followed them. Or you and I would have turned the first time we visited Sith-ta."

"True." He sighed. "This is all too much. I'm an old man, and I'm tired."

"Sleep," Luke invited. He gestured to the couch in the conversation circle. "Go into a healing trance. You could use it."

Lord Luke nodded, drew on the Force, and lay down. His shields went back up as he went into the trance.

Luke and Mara sat in silence for a few moments.

"Luke? Are you alright?"

"More alright than he is, anyway. I can't believe that's the future me."

"It isn't."

"Mara, we popped the final cap. He's not a clone. Or anything. He's telling the truth. He's really a time traveler."

"That future will never come to be. We know about it, and we can change it. And why else is he here, except to change it?"

"I suppose. But Mara—he really is a Dark Lord of the Sith. And he's me."

"I won't let you fall." Mara came to Luke and embraced him.


	6. Chapter 6

The Final Iteration

Chapter 6

"You're awake," said Luke to Lord Luke.

The old Sith ran a hand down the front of his body, as if checking to make sure it was still there and in good working order. Then he sat up and started working out the stiffness of age from his hands.

"Yes, I am," Lord Luke said. "I don't know if I should be surprised. A person is awfully helpless in a healing trance. I wouldn't put it past Mara to keep reinjuring me so I won't wake up, until my body eats itself."

Shocked anew, Luke said, "I wouldn't let that happen."

"I guess not." Lord Luke rose and stretched and headed unerringly for the sanitary facilities.

Luke reflected that he should not be surprised that Lord Luke knew his way around the apartment. But he was still taking in the idea of meeting his future self. His future self who wore Sith tattoos and contemplated skinning an old friend alive in revenge, and for what? Lying? Lying to spare Luke's own feelings? Luke shook his head.

After a few minutes, Luke heard Lord Luke rustling around in the kitchen, and then he reappeared in the conversation circle with a mug of hot chocolate.

Luke raised his eyebrows. "A thousand years in the Sith Court and you never learned to drink alcohol?"

Lord Luke shrugged. "The Court can be a macho place, even with a Queen at his head. There's all kinds of power reshuffling going on all the time, backbiting like you wouldn't believe. Everybody's out to prove themselves all the time. So yeah, I learned how to do stuff to make me look tough, to fit it. I learned how to drink. I learned how to say things in Ancient Sith that would leave Threepio at a loss for words."

Luke smiled a little, contemplating Threepio stunned into silence.

Lord Luke continued, "I learned to play the game of Threat and Counterthreat. I grew weary of the posturing. But if I stopped playing then I ended up fighting to prove my strength and skill. And that was worse. So yeah, if I was in the middle of the Sith Court right now, surrounded by courtiers all looking for a way to score at my expense, I wouldn't ask a passing servitor for hot chocolate. But I'm not going to posture when I'm alone."

"You're not alone."

"You're me. I'm talking to myself. I'm a crazy old Sith Lord talking to myself. Hey, what do you know, that sounds kind of scary, doesn't it? Maybe I'll use that as a posturing strategy some time."

Luke shook his head. "So OK. You're here, and you're really a time traveler. You're here to stop Darth Caedus. So what now?"

"Yes. I'm here to stop Darth Caedus by interfering with his Force visions. For all my power and sorcery, it's not power but the most subtle, subtle, subtle of Force techniques that will stop him. But no one must know I'm here."

"So what exactly are you planning to do? Go live in a cave and get attuned to Force visions so you can mess with them?"

"Something like that."

"Then why come here? If that's what you wanted to do, you could do it without my help, or Mara's."

"Ah." Lord Luke waved a dismissive hand. "That was pure self-indulgence. I just wanted to see Mara again, one more time before I die. That's all. Would you mind if I kissed her?"

"I wouldn't, but I think she would," Luke replied, bemused. "If you want to stay ungutted, I wouldn't try it."

"Mm. Yeah."

"Give it a rest, Lord Luke. She's never going to welcome you here. Even though she does believe you now. Look, you told her she's going to die. You told her she HAS to die, or Ben's going to turn to the Dark Side. And you expect her to be happy to see you?"

"Oh. Right."

"So, uh… what now?"

"I should just go," Lord Luke said. "I always hated goodbyes anyway. I had my perfect moment. The rest is just… the rest."

"Where will you go? Dagobah?"

Lord Luke snorted. "Hardly. That rain infested swamp? Don't you know Yoda lived there to hide his Force presence from the Emperor? Because he lived close to a place where a Dark Jedi died. No, I do need to find a place where I can hide my Force presence, too. From Jacen, and from the rest of the Masters and the Jedi Order, and the witches of Dathomir, and the Aing-Ti Monks, and anybody else who could betray my presence. But I'm a Dark Lord of the Sith. My Force presence is nothing like Yoda's."

"Well, that's true. But you're also a Jedi Master."

"Let me guess. You can feel the conflict within me?" Lord Luke sneered.

Luke blushed. "That's not fair."

"Yes it is. You're being too simplistic. Don't you see that I'm already perfectly balanced? Light and dark are not at war within me. They're working together. As they should. It's taken me hundreds of years to get like this. I don't need a particular place to disguise me. I just need to refrain from making ripples in the Force. Touch it lightly, let it flow around me, like the White Current. Like the Fallanassi do."

Luke flinched a little.

"They're not much of a secret where I come from."

"You're not going to tell me where you're going, are you?"

"Why would I do that? There's a chance Caedus could pull it from your mind, if you had a mental picture of me where I'm going to be. Bury this whole thing deep down."

"Yes, yes, I know that story."

"We will meet again, before the end," Lord Luke said.

"You know something," Luke accused.

"I know many things. Yes, I have some dark design on you, Luke, but it's better not to know too much about the future."

"I don't believe you're planning to turn me. So what else is there?"

Lord Luke turned to go, but Luke reached out in the Force and stopped him.

"That's a dangerous game to play with me, young one," Lord Luke growled.

"What are you planning?"

"Nothing less than righting history. And nothing more." Lord Luke shrugged off Luke's Force-grip, tripped the door controls with the power of the Noble Gift, and strode off into the city in a swirl of cloaks.


	7. Chapter 7

The Final Iteration

Chapter 7

As Lord Luke walked away from Luke and Mara's quarters, an even older Lord Luke flowed out of the White Current just outside the apartment. He was careful not to disturb his former self; he did not want to change his own past at all, not this time.

He just needed Luke and Mara to go about their business in innocence, not knowing what Lord Luke had just told them. It would change too much.

Mara never needed to know any of this. Elderly Lord Luke reached out in the Force and erased the last day from her mind. As simple as that; Mara was never nearly as powerful as Luke, even before Lord Luke began multiplying his midichlorians and pursuing that certain other program of strength, on which his immortality depended. Lord Luke as he was today was a sun beside a planet next to her, an entirely different order of being.

But Luke would need these memories back, eventually. On the day he decided to become Darth Vengeus, to avenge Mara's murder. The day Lord Luke would come to him again.

Lord Luke reached out carefully into Luke's mind. This was not the power-blowing sweep that he had done in Mara's mind, like landscape maintenance droids blowing leaves off a walkway to erase the evidence of a previous day's storm. No, this a far trickier maneuver, a memory cap. This was how Lord Luke had capped his own memory on Dagobah, so another self could marry his sister.

Lord Luke was expert and powerful, but he did not want to be detected, nor did he want to damage Luke in any way. That was his own mind, after all, in a sense. So he took his time, sinking through the layers of Luke's mind, navigating delicate mazes he could have jumped over, just to be certain not to stir a single leaf out of place. When he was done, Luke's memories of Lord Luke were totally intact, but walled off until the moment came. That was the most difficult part, setting up the memory cap to automatically dissolve when Luke spoke a catchphrase. That phrase was "I am Darth Vengeus."

Lord Luke checked his work, and nodded, satisfied. Then he closed his eyes for a moment and dissolved back into the future.


	8. Chapter 8

The Final Iteration

Chapter 8

A blast of wind hit him as he opened the roof door. It fluttered in Lord Luke's borrowed Jedi robes.

He felt detached as he walked out onto the rooftop. As if his strange reappearance in this timeline had happened ages ago. What was he going to do now? It was years before there was going to be much to do with his plan, although he supposed it was not too early to set himself up somewhere private where he could sink into Force-visions without interruptions. If he started small, just attuning himself, and then planted a few very small, insignificant visions for Jacen, it would make it easier to plant the larger, more important visions later. And he certainly had plenty of time.

Lord Luke snorted. His current vessel was rapidly running out of time, actually; it was nearing the end of its useful lifespan, and Lord Luke no longer had access to Sith healers. Even the greatest vurgh could not cure old age, but they could keep strength and flexibility going.

Speaking of vessels… Lord Luke's eye fell on the Temple aircar that Luke had arrived in. It would not take him off Coruscant, but it would take him off this roof.

He got in and put his hand on the touchplate. It would recognize the hand pattern of any humanoid Jedi, and various other identifiers of other Jedi species. The aircar's computer read his hand pattern and the aircar rumbled to life.

"I want my X-Wing," Lord Luke muttered. Well, that was a bad idea. The Luke that belonged in this timeline needed to have it. "I want R2," he whispered to himself. But the same reasoning applied, and in any case, he had dropped into his life post- Vong War, and the X-Wings of that era did not have droid sockets.

Well, he could take some other X-Wing, though.

The sunlight in Coruscant's sky was red as Vader's lightsaber. Wasn't it morning? Hadn't he just gotten up? "Computer: time." It was late night in summer. If he went to the fighter base, he should be able to just make it in before the shields went up for the night, but after most everyone settled down for the night. Postwar, the GA military had taken to running only one shift, to save on expenses. If he remembered right, in this time period, that should still be so, despite the Corellian civil war. Nobody expected an attack on Coruscant itself, after all. That was nothing but a brush war, a local war of independence.

Lord Luke sped up, and ducked in and out of traffic patterns, looking for the fastest stream. He had… fourteen standard time parts. He was going to have to rush. Without drawing the attention of Coruscanti air traffic police; well, that part was easy. He reached out in the Force and visualized air traffic police floaters scattering away from him. If any came close anyway, he could always try the Jedi mind trick. He had gotten rather good at it in the last few hundred years or so.

Bob around this slowpoke, cut that corner, race up to the next stream, time: it was still fourteen standard time parts away, and he was halfway there. How had he done that?

Well, no matter. There was the base. The Temple aircar's transponder communicated with the base computer, identifying itself as a known friendly. Lord Luke did not bother trying to disguise his identity, since they were going to find the aircar itself here eventually.

The field was all lit up, and there was landing activity going on. Some kind of exercise. Lord Luke sheared off and headed instead to another part of the fighter base.

He landed the aircar. It took three tries to get the canopy to open. There was something wrong with the electrical system. The onboard clock only started ticking over to the next time part when Lord Luke shut off the engines.

He wrapped himself in a White Current illusion. Nobody specific, just an anonymous pilot, in standard fatigues, not the gaudy orange pilot jumpsuit the GA had inherited from the New Republic, and from the Rebel Alliance before it. Lord Luke strode onto the base with a practiced confident walk, as if he belonged there. Once, he did belong there, but he did not hold a GA commission. Or rather, Luke didn't.

It was probably a good idea to practice first, anyway, Lord Luke reflected. He had not been in an X-Wing in… centuries? Certainly not in this kind, anyway. In his most recent lifetime, the ship type had been completely replaced by Verpine models during the Vong War, and he had not had to fly any X-Wings without an astromech droid in that lifetime. It was all coming back to him now.

Lord Luke made his way to the simulator room, empty and shadowed at this time of night. He reached out in the Force to the electrical flows and turned on some lights and one of the simulators. Shucking out of the voluminous over layer of the brown Jedi robe, Lord Luke climbed into the cockpit wearing the plain, natural color wrap jacket and pants of the Jedi habit, which looked very similar to the ordinary clothes he had once worn as a boy on Tatooine, a thousand years ago.

He brought up the standard flight simulator first. Combat could come later, as a treat for himself. First he was going to practice takeoffs and landings, standard aerial maneuvers, and other such boring necessities. He was going to have to stay in the sims all night anyway, make his way to the landing field when it was deserted, and take off at dawn when the shield went down, so he might as well settle in for the long haul.

His reactions were slower than he liked. It was not that he had forgotten so much; it was that his fingers were stiff, and his body just did not move the way it should. He couldn't do anything about that yet. He had to wait until the right time.

He made himself do maneuvers until he fell asleep. An indeterminate time later, he woke up and rubbed his eyes and stretched, and sucked on some water from the pilot straw inside the cockpit, which was thankfully fully stocked, just like a real fighter would be. Then he engaged the combat program. He smiled the first time he got to blow up a simulated opponent. But even the combat sims got old after a while; flying against the computer just was not that exciting.

Then there was a flashing light on his console. Someone in another simulator wanted to fly against him. He accepted, and grinned. Some young hotshot was out there at what? Two hours til dawn, getting in some flight time. Being the best of the best. Well, not today. Not against Lord Luke.

They zipped into a simulated asteroid shower. The big rocks bounced off each other, changing vectors, speed, and spin, providing a worthy obstacle course. It was actually more difficult for Lord Luke to navigate the simulated asteroid field than a real one, since the computer generated rocks did not have physical reality in the Force. His opponent's mind did, though.

Luke opened himself to impressions of the other pilot, but refrained from touching the mind in any way. He wanted to fly against a sharp, unclouded mind.

He could tell his opponent was a young human male; that was not at all unusual among the fighter corps. He could tell the man was excited by the challenge Lord Luke presented. Lord Luke heard his opponent thinking, "Who is this guy? He flies like nobody I've ever seen."

Lord Luke laughed out loud and really laid on the speed. He came so close to some of the asteroids that he was terrain-following on their landscape.

The young pilot stayed right on his tail. He fired as Lord Luke juked and jinked, sending out bright red lances of destruction that exploded parts of the asteroids or flew forever into empty night, but never found their mark. Lord Luke could feel his opponent's intention just before he fired, and maneuvered his X-Wing out of the way of the incoming fire even before the young pilot actually fired. Lord Luke was old, and his body was slowing down, but his powers in the Force had grown with age, like a fine Badorian brandy getting more potent in its barrel as it evaporated, concentrating its essence.

Then Lord Luke slingshotted around a large asteroid, picking up speed, and dropped in on the other pilot's tail. He took his time lining up his shot. Everything seemed to slow down. His opponent's ship moved left under the targeting scope like it was underwater. The asteroids zipping by were suddenly moving like ponderous, rocky banthas, lazy in the heat of the day. The perfect shot appeared in Lord Luke's sights and he fired.

The simulator's light flashed as the computer showed a ship breaking apart in front of him, indicating the other pilot was out of the fight. He felt the young man turning off his sim even before the simulator's computer voice told him the other ship was off, and asking if Lord Luke wished to end his own simulation.

Lord Luke decided to get out of the cockpit. The young man's curiosity was like a spike in his mind; there was nothing for it but to reveal himself, or he would wait around all night, spoiling Lord Luke's plan to steal a real fighter just before dawn.

Lord Luke considered using an anonymous illusion, but that would only fuel the young pilot's curiosity. Instead he fixed in his mind the appearance of himself at this point in time: his real identity, but minus the Sith tattooes and a lot of years. His white hair disappeared, and lines plumped out and erased themselves from his face.

He popped the canopy and got out.

"You're human," said the young pilot. "The way you moved so fast, I was sure I was flying against a Dug."

Lord Luke shrugged, and held out his hand for his brown robe. He called it in the Force, and it flew to him. The silver tube of his lightsaber flashed in the subdued lighting of the simulator room as he donned his Jedi uniform.

The young pilot gasped. "L—"

"Yes, me," Lord Luke cut him off. "Well, I guess I've still got it."

"Can I shake your hand?" The pilot's voice was slightly breathless.

"Sure, why not." Lord Luke pasted on a social smile. He wondered, idly, what would happen if he left this young man dismembered and headless on the floor. No, no, he told himself; the other Luke still has to live on this planet. Besides, this was still the past; he shouldn't change anything he had not thoroughly researched. He shook the youth's hand.

Fortunately, the young pilot stopped short of asking for Luke's autograph or vid scan. Lord Luke endured a few minutes of youthful chatter, and then went on his way.

He went back to the Temple aircar to ride it over to the landing field. The clock said it was only half past midnight. Lord Luke reset it, and flew over to the airfield. When he landed, the aircar's clock had regressed two standard time parts.

Lord Luke stared at the clock in horror. Ice went down his spine and he shivered.

"That's how I did it," he whispered to himself. "I don't need the Great Machine anymore. Queen Dije was right. I have worn a hole in the fabric of the space-time continuum. I bend time just by thinking about it, now. I used the Great Machine so much I've become—un-anchored to the timeline."

He climbed out of the aircard and walked slowly across the deserted field. "And I affect the things around me. The simulator, too; that odd slow motion feeling, that was time literally slowing down."

Lord Luke selected an X-Wing, checked to make sure it had recently been refueled, restocked with torpedoes, air, water, and so forth, and climbed in.

"Artoo, fire up the… Oh. Right." Lord Luke flipped the switches of the warmup cycle manually, thoughts racing, having a hard time concentrating on what he was doing.

Finally he was ready to fly. He engaged the engines and flew off the base just at dawn. As soon as he cleared the base's shields, he cast a White Current illusion around the ship, making it appear to be a harmless light hauler. Then he sped for the upper atmosphere, and watched the light and the shimmer of the last turbulent air give way, and the endless stars come out for him, in the gentle darkness. No matter how many times he saw that transition, it never got old for him. It was one of the things that made his weary, unnaturally long life worth living.

"Safe," Lord Luke sighed. He pointed the ship at random, and flew to the edge of the star system. Then he set his course, and flew off down the tunnel of swords that was the streaking stars of hyperspace.


	9. Chapter 9

The Final Iteration

Chapter 9

The natural cavern was darker than space, for there were no stars. It was quiet, and private, but full of memories. It was here that Queen Dije had seen the vision of the End of the World. Now, the End of the World had come and gone, and the Queen had seen her people through it, as best she could. A few of her people. Animal species reduced to these numbers rarely recovered. But the Jedi had come through the Emperor's Jedi Purges and in the next generation had been reborn. And then they had come through the Jedi Hunts of the Peace Brigade, still going strong. So perhaps there was hope for the Sith.

Assuming the universe survived.

Dije was still too connected to the Force to conjure a glow light with the White Current, so soon after sinking into Vision. She wiped the tears from her tattooed cheeks in utter darkness. Then she mentally groped for the heavy door that sealed this natural tunnel off from the man-made fortress all around it, and opened it with the Force. It swung open in silence and darkness. Dije reached out in the Force for the light, and inward for the Noble Gift, and completed the electric circuit. Harsh, utilitarian lighting came on in the echoing, laser-carved tunnel.

Queen Dije wiped her tears again, on the end of her black cape. There was no help for it; the vision had confirmed her fears. She rose stiffly to her feet, stumbling a few times until the circulation returned. She had been sitting in the cave for a long time.

She sieved the mind-song of the fortress to locate Ordos. Homing in on his familiar thoughts, she found her Royal Illusionist in the village above the fortress. Out here, real daylight shone through the Force-maintained shield which kept radiation, giant mutant snakes, and other unwanted things out of the Sacred Lands. Artificial suns had kept the land going through the years of the Vong War, when the shield had been cocontinuous with a White Current illusion which had kept out the Vong. Now all was peaceful. Except in Dije's heart.

Ordos turned at her approach. He was wearing a dark purple robe, fruit of the renewed interstellar trade. "Queen Dije," he said softly. "I see by your expression that you do not have good news."

"No," she whispered, shaking her head shallowly. She took a seat beside him on a handy stone bench. There was a prickly plant flowering in the village, and she and Ordos both sat and looked at it for a few moments. "Is this prosperity?" Dije wondered. "To have enough rain, and sun, and clean soil to grow flowers, just for pretty?"

"Perhaps," Ordos replied.

After a long pause, Dije said, "I was right. I did feel a time ripple. And then what seem like a few time ripple aftershocks. He's done it again. I don't know how I still know. When time shifts, shouldn't everyone and everything shift with it? Including me?"

"Yes, but you are the Queen."

"True. The Queen ceremony changed me. Brought me so close to Fala, and to the Force and the White Current, that I tasted a little of the life of the Goddess." Dije shook her head again, and her green-plaited Fallanassi braids shook like grain in a breeze. "However it happened, I did see. I have to call the Twins."

"Must it be them?"

"I can't think of anyone else capable of doing the job. Except me, but I can't go off and hunt someone off world and expect to keep it quiet."

"There is that," Ordos sighed, opening a hand as if letting go of an idea.

Dije rose, and made her peculiar gesture, knuckles to shoulder with curled-in fingers. A Sith Lord's polite substitute for a hearty pat on the arm. Ordos flicked her a reassuring smile.

Dije went to the hypercomm rig in her fortress. She wished she had a code to use, but the Twins' usual victims were political targets, meant to be public. Queen Dije could not send a messenger, because the Twins took their orders only from Dije; that was a safeguard against palace intrigue.

She contacted them. It took a minute for them to get somewhere private to accept her call. She wished she had invested in holocomm so they could speak face to face. Then she dismissed that thought; while she was wishing, why not wish this was not necessary at all?

They came on the line. Piker's voice announced they were there and ready for her orders.

"I have a job for you. Not a political assassination. This has got to be secret. It's very complicated. And…" Queen Dije let out a breath and steadied her voice. "Well. Did I ever mention…"

"What is it, Majesty?" asked Piekke after a long pause.

"You've heard the ancient story of the Time Lords of the First Sith?"

"Yes," Piker replied cautiously. "But none of them survived. Right?"

"None," agreed Dije. "In the end, they destroyed their own civilization, and nearly destroyed the universe. Now another has that power. But we have to be really careful. There are two of him. One that belongs in this timeline, who is innocent, and a friend and ally. And one who is a Time Lord."

"How do we tell them apart?" asked Piker.

"The Time Lord is a Dark Lord of the Sith, and has the tattoos. The other is a Jedi."

"Who is he, and where do we find him?" asked Piker.

"Where, I don't know. My vision only tells me he is here. And he must be eliminated before he causes enough paradox to rip apart the space-time continuum and destroy the universe."

Dije paused again, and finally, Piekke asked, "Who is it, My Queen?"

"Lord Luke," she replied.

"Majesty? Do we know a Lord Luke?"

"Luke Skywalker."

Piekke protested in a small voice, "He's our father."

"The real one is your father. The Time Lord… is some other Piekke's father, from some other timeline. I know, it makes me head hurt to think about. And even the Time Lord is still Luke, in some way. I love him, Piekke. But he must die."

Piker asked, "How do you want him to die?"

"Not your usual way," Dije said. "Don't draw it out. I'm only giving this to you two because I don't have anyone else strong enough to even get close to him. Even so, you'll still need to bring some mercenaries with you. Those with the field effect talent. At least a dozen."

"Queen Dije," Piker pointed out, "if we damp down the Force that much, we won't be able to do much with it either."

"True. And he is also a master of the White Current. Well, the method I'll leave to you. But I want it done quickly. Not stretched out over hours or days. Painlessly, even, if it can be done without excessive risk. This isn't a deterrent killing like your usual targets."

"We understand," said Piekke.


	10. Chapter 10

The Final Iteration

Chapter 10

The young Jedi stumbled over his words, dropped his papers – yes, he was using actual papers, not a handcomp, perhaps as an aid to concentration, although it did not appear to be working – picked them up and fumbled with them and never looked up. Not at the assembled Masters, and not at the magnificent view of the pinking skies of Coruscant out the transparisteel window.

"Relax," Luke said softly. "Don't be nervous, we're just people."

The young man looked up then, and met Luke's eyes briefly. He visibly inhaled, attempting a Jedi calming technique. "Thank you, Grand Master," he said softly. Then, in a louder and more deliberate tone, he continued, "Members of the trace team could detect no particular Force presence at the site of the anomaly. However, a scientific scan of the area detected tachyon and gravitron levels consistent with recent experiments in fourth dimensionality."

"Fourth what?" asked the Barabel.

"Excuse me, Master Sebatyne. Recent scientific experiments of the University of Coruscant with time travel."

The Bothan Master snorted a little. One of the others murmured a bit, whether in awe or disbelief no one could tell.

"Time travel," Luke repeated. "Why does that sound… familiar?" He shook his head.

The young Jedi glanced at Grand Master Skywalker again, but this time it was a sidelong look. He cleared his throat. "The Temple aircar's clock continues to run backwards. However, all its other systems appear to be working properly, and the team was able to download the biometric identifier of the pilot who flew it to the military base. Ahem. It said it was, ah, Grand Master Luke Skywalker."

Luke's brows rose. "That makes no sense. The timing is wrong. The day that Mara and I missed somehow was the day BEFORE the Temple aircar was taken to the base. I remember the morning it landed there. I remember being in my apartment."

"I don't understand the mathematics of fourth dimensional theory," the youth said. "But if time travel was involved, the timing may not mean anything. Or at least, not mean what it ought to mean."

"OK," Luke said. "Go on."

"A pilot at the base claims he flew against you in simulator combat that night, Grand Master. In between when the aircar landed and when the X-Wing went missing. The team reviewed the simulator recording. Unfortunately it does not record the pilot's identity, but whoever it was had reaction times that the, um…" he fumbled with his papers, found the right one and turned it right-side up, "the simulator norms say are outside the parameters even for a Jedi."

"Outside the parameters meaning what, exactly?" Luke asked.

The young pilot read off the stats.

"That's—" Luke sat forward and extended a hand, "let me see that." He read the printout from the sim himself. "That's what it says alright." He handed it back. "OK, this just got very weird."

The Barabel sissed a little and said, "It iz already very weird, Master Luke."

"Yes, but—this guy, whoever he is, he's better than me."

"Ah, I zsee," the Barabel replied. "Time anomalies are not weird, but zomeone flying better than the great Luke Zskywalker…"

"Really," Luke said. "Nobody can do this. I certainly can't. Not on my best day. Maybe this mystery pilot really can manipulate time. That's the only explanation for reaction times like this. Look, in a couple of places they're negative numbers."

"Prediction is a Jedi talent," said Mara. She had been silent up until now, although she had smirked eloquently at Saba Sebatyne's joke. "Cilghal can do short range prediction. She could even before she was trained, that's how she was identified."

"Not like this," Luke insisted. "And there is the matter of the missing day. Maybe there was a ripple in time, and we just, poof, went from one day to another and skipped one. And, why did I come back early from Gyndine? I contacted the people I had been meeting with there. They tell me I was in the middle of a sentence and suddenly sagged and got this far away look in my eye and then rushed off planet like I was responding to general quarters. I don't remember any of that."

"Perhaps the trace team should check for fourth dimensionality related emissions around you," the youth suggested, going quiet in the last part of the sentence, perhaps still intimidated to find the famous and powerful Grand Master at the center of his investigation. Or perhaps he simply did not enjoy public speaking.

"Yes, good idea," Luke agreed immediately. "And our apartment too, that was where I was when the anomaly occurred. Have the team come to my meditation chamber to scan me after the Council is over, and then my apartment. Separately, I don't want to cross contaminate the readings. See to it."

"Yes, Grand Master," the youth bowed and exited.

After the Masters had rehashed the matter a bit, Luke went to his "meditation chamber", which was also his office in the Temple. He found a message light on the discreet computer set on a small table against one wall. It came in anonymously, with neither a person nor a place attached as the origin point, but it had come in with an override code that swept it right past the Temple's computer security. Granted, that security was more designed to keep out the numerous ads, propositions, death threats, and requests for autographs that someone of his fame always received, than any kind of military grade system. Still—it was Luke's own override code. Even Mara didn't know it. Heck, even R2D2 didn't know it. Either the mystery person really was Luke, time traveling, or—someone had read Luke's mind. Gotten past his strong Force shields without him even noticing anyone was there.

Luke keyed up the message and the hair on the back of his neck stood up on end. It was written in Modern Sith.

He tried to key up an audio channel to call Threepio for a translation, and missed the button because his hand was shaking. Luke paused to meditate, and get control of his breathing and reactions. Then he called the droid. It was with Leia, of course, but happened not to be too busy to talk. Well, Threepio was never too busy to talk.

The message said, "If you're ever on a tour of one of Lando's arms factories, say on Fonduraan, with Han and Lando, and the salesman says his competitor's product is 'like kissing your sister'—no matter what runs through your mind before he says 'just not very satisfying', no matter how lost in thought you get, when somebody snaps his fingers in front of your face to get you to move to the next room with the rest of the group, do NOT say 'Sorry, you lost me on the kissing your sister part.' That conversation never ends well. ESPECIALLY if you try to make light of it by saying, 'Hey, a man can think, can't he?' Do you REALLY want to end up threatening to carve Han up with your lightsaber? Don't go there. Just don't. Oh, and P.S., have you seen her lately? She's really not that hot anymore."

Luke shut off the comm before he ended up telling Threepio to do something a droid would probably take too literally. His vision went red. He wanted to kill something.

It was at that moment that the scan team arrived. Luke barely held it together while the two of them scanned and pronounced him free of tacky whozy whatsit particles. He sent them on to his apartment and then sat down on the floor. To meditate, or at least to let go of his anger.

That had to have come from the mystery man. The mystery pilot who knew him far too well. And knew too much about the future. Luke had been thinking of visiting Lando on Fonduraan, but he hadn't mentioned it to anyone yet.

Whoever he was, assuming he wasn't actually Luke from the future—and maybe even if he was—if Luke ever caught up with him, he was going to kill him.


	11. Chapter 11

The Final Iteration

Chapter 11

Lord Luke caught the boy right outside his hotel. The mop-headed little ragamuffin did not even struggle as Lord Luke picked him up with one hand, not even using the Force so as not to attract attention. He brought the child's face right up to his own and examined his eyes in the sunlight. Always dull, the eyes of the spies. Slow to track.

Lord Luke's gaze pierced right through those dull hazel eyes and into the boy's confused mind. He did not know where the searchers were. Or who they were. The child did not even know he was a spy; that was the way it always was. Whoever was looking for Lord Luke knew they could not get close to him without Lord Luke being able to detect their Force presence. They knew they could not use any spy who knew anything, for his unprotected mind would alert the Dark Lord. They must conceal their presence with the White Current when they planted commands in their spies' minds with the Force; and that meant whoever was looking for Lord Luke was a Sith. Or Jacen, but Lord Luke was confident Jacen did not yet suspect his existence. How the searchers managed to rendezvous with and retrieve the spies they sent, Lord Luke did not know.

Lord Luke sighed and let the boy go. Clearly, just keeping switching hotels all the time was not going to do the job. He hoped he did not really have to go live in a cave in order to affect Jacen's visions. He liked being able to order a morning plate of toast, local lizard eggs, and hot chocolate from room service. But affecting Jacen's visions meant attuning perfectly with the Force, exactly the way he would attune to the White Current. He did not see how, but clearly he must be leaving distinctive ripples in the Force, because the searchers kept finding him.

So far they had not come close enough for Lord Luke to identify them, because he kept leaving whenever he caught a spy. Perhaps he should follow the spy this time, hunt the hunters, and take care of the problem. The regularity with which they kept chasing him off was starting to annoy him.

Annoyance was a form of anger, if a mild one. It turned easily to hate, and brought with it a vast dark pool of shadows, lapping over each other with a whispering sound like lost souls: the lake of potential of the Dark Side, an endless battery pack just waiting for him to plug in. The only cost, everything he was.

Lord Luke shook off those morbid thoughts and followed the boy. He kept the child's black, curly hair in sight, not bothering to be subtle. He reined in his power, using only normal senses and passive noticing in the Force and the White Current, like a starship using only passive sensors to hunt a wary enemy. Whoever the searchers were, he was sure he would alert them faster by trying to use a White Current disguise than by simply walking along like anybody else on the street, drawing as little power as possible. Even so, he supposed he was an anomaly to their senses, like a whirlpool in the White Current, or else how could they keep finding him again and again?

There they were: two Force presences, dark as Vader's cape, one on either end of the street. This was too easy. It was a trap, and they had been waiting for him. No matter. He was more powerful than they were. His opponents must know that, hence their elaborate caution.

Lord Luke turned around and scanned the street, drawing power. He was unsure if it were the dark side or the light, nor did he care. It was all grey now.

He noticed something now, with all the power of the Force drawn to him, that he had not noticed before. There was a Force-null bubble right in front of him. The boy disappeared from the underlying reality of the Force as he walked through it, an image only, an empty shell without the shining consciousness of the Force connecting him to all things.

Lord Luke looked all around. The street was not particularly empty; the Sith who hunted him apparently had no regard for innocent bystanders. People walked on grey presscrete sidewalks, while dusty landspeeders and wheeled carts trundled down the middle of the road, and aircars whizzed overhead. Buildings rose all around, around 5 or 6 stories high, all full of life. A major wizard war here would have a lot of collateral damage. Perhaps that was part of the trap? Did they count on Luke caring about minimizing the loss of innocent life?

If so, Lord Luke mused, they were counting on an earlier Luke. He had cared about such things once. For the first few hundred years or so. Now, he had learned to be laser-focused on his goal, so as not to be distracted again by trying to fix all the unrelated problems of the universe. What was his goal again? Yes, right: stop Caedus. Save Ben.

Boom!

The wind hit him first. Gritty, hot, choking, full of unidentifiable shrapnel. Then came the sudden loss. He experienced it as a loss of his own power, for a moment, because he was so connected to the Force, so attuned to everything around him. That was the truth of the Sith proverb, "the Force is Life." It took him an instant to realize it was the loss of other peoples' lives he was sensing, lives of which he had not been aware a moment before, because they had been in the Force-null bubble. The explosion had killed the ysalamiri, too, and the Force came roaring back to the dead zone right when the dying was happening.

A dull thunk near his feet made Lord Luke look down. It was a head. A child's head—a baby's, really—human, red hair. Ben!

"Stop! Stop it!" Lord Luke shrieked.

Everything stopped. Dust motes hung in air. Bits of wrecked building stopped in mid-arc. Even sound stopped. The screaming went silent.

Lord Luke realized the child was not really Ben at about the same time he realized everything was quiet. At first he thought his eardrums had been blown out by the explosion. But that would not explain the wheeled ground vehicle stopped right beside him, one of its four wheels a few centimeters above the roadway, black skid marks leading back from it with a crazy jag in the middle, evidence of maneuvering to avoid the chunk of presscrete falling right in front of it.

Correction, the chunk of presscrete that HAD been falling right in front of it. It was stopped too, hanging in the air like a snapshot.

Lord Luke looked around, confused. "I did that," he whispered. "I stopped time."

He took a step forward, and nothing happened. The spell was not broken. He realized he could just walk away from this trap.

But he did not want to. "If I can control time, really control time, not just slip timestreams like the Great Machine, I could roll this all back and do it over. Prevent the explosion."

Lord Luke looked down again at the child's head. The truth was, he did care. He had told the other Luke that he did not posture when he was by himself, but that had been exactly what he had been doing. Posturing had become such second nature that he had nearly convinced himself that he was a selfish, uncaring Sith Lord out only for himself. But deep down, he was still Luke Skywalker.

He walked out of the path of the explosion first, prudently, in case this did not work. Then he concentrated hard on the previous hour, willing everything to wind backward like a recording. And it did. Right in front of him.

The Sith who were hunting him were still there, waiting. Lord Luke did not pop in on them from outside time to fight them. He was too rattled to fight up to his full ability right now, and he did not feel like killing anyone. The loss of life that had not happened yet, that would not happen at all now, was still too fresh for him. The Force reverberated with his shock. He could barely stand to touch it at all, at least for the next few minutes.

Instead, Lord Luke flowed into the White Current, and disappeared. He felt the Siths' attention on him immediately; he had made a mistake. They were masters of illusion as well, and had only drawn their gaze. He felt the near one's intention of harm, reaching for the button to detonate the bomb again. It was all going to happen over again.

"No! Stop!" And time stopped for him again. Everything went silent.

He reached out in the Force for the bomber, following that narrow focus of intent. Lord Luke closed his eyes to concentrate better. He dragged the Sith bomber out of his hiding place and pushed him into the Force-null bubble. Now he could not detonate his bomb without blowing himself up.

Lord Luke walked away, down the silent street. He wove in and out around stopped-still pedestrians, until he came to the spaceport and got into his stolen X-Wing. He had to let go of time and let it start again to take off. The engine would not start unless time flowed. Then Lord Luke flew away. Just away. He picked a course at random from preprogrammed selections. Stars turned to streaks, and he entered hyperspace.

Then the first time ripple caught up with him. It was like the aftershocks of an earthquake. It went through his mind, through his soul.

He was in an X-Wing. Where was he? Where was the rest of Rogue Squadron?

Luke spoke into his comm. "Wedge?" He got only static back. "R2?" He was alone.

Then the second time ripple passed through him.


	12. Chapter 12

The Final Iteration

Chapter 12

The preprogrammed course popped him out of hyperspace in the middle of a fleet. Sleek white triangle shaped sliced through the blackness of space, a nimbus of smaller ships buzzing around them. Far away, there was a planet, and even farther, a star. They were on the edge of a solar system, running without lights: a battle group preparing to surprise someone.

Not, presumably, the man in the Stealth-X, though, since they were not shooting at him.

A communication from the flagship crackled over the speaker. "X-Wing fighter, identify yourself."

"Um, I don't know?" The man's voice was higher than average, although he was no longer young. There was an edge of panic in his voice, and he automatically went into a breathing exercise to banish it, although he could not remember why, or how he had learned to do that.

"State your intentions," said the comm officer.

"I can't remember," said the pilot, calmer now, but still with fear and frustration evident in his voice. His voice was much more expressive than average, too.

"X-Wing, follow my beacon and land in the Executor's hangar bay."

"Executor," the pilot repeated. It sounded familiar, somehow. His first reaction was a stab of fear deep down in his gut, but then it was followed by a warm feeling like coming home. Perhaps his emotions were as unreliable as his memory. He did the breathing exercise again, banishing all passion.

He found the beacon easily enough, but all the controls in his fighter looked wrong. They were not quite in the right places, and the monitors looked weird. "I don't know how," he whined. "Um, R2, land for me, please."

There was a pause, and the comm officer said slowly, "Pilot, you're in a Galactic Alliance Stealth-X. You don't have an astromech droid." He spoke as if wondering if the X-Wing pilot were a dangerous madman. "Hold there and we'll bring you in with the tractor beam."

The detail that met the mystery pilot was a mixed message: a full squad of Imperial Stormtroopers, a three-man medical unit consisting of a doctor and two burly assistants, and a graying officer in the uniform of an Imperial Admiral. He was the reason for the fleet's existence, and should probably have delegated this duty to a lesser officer, but he had recently found himself with fewer important duties to do, and he was curious about the mystery pilot. He was of high enough rank to indulge himself on occasion, especially since most of his projects these days were self-appointed.

The mystery pilot popped the canopy and stood up. He threw back his arm as if to disentangle himself from a cape, but he was not wearing one. He had on fairly ordinary street wear, except that it was all black, and looked like he might not have taken the tags off yet. His shirt was both crisp and wrinkled in the way things are right off the rack. Against the black backdrop, the silver lightsaber was glaringly obvious.

The man had white hair, and black facial tattoos: an eight-rayed star on his forehead, and twin lines beside his mouth. The tattoos of a Dark Lord of the Sith.

The man looked around, saw the maintenance crew was not coming forward with the exit ladder, and reached out to the equipment in the Force. He gestured, and the dismounting gantry came rolling over to him obediently. He climbed down the ladder, and walked at once toward the officer, obviously in charge.

The Sith Lord stopped a few feet away from the Admiral. He studied him for a few seconds, and then dropped to one knee, bending his proud head. "Emperor Pellaeon."

The officer cleared his throat. "Ah. Rise."

The Sith Lord stood up and gazed into Pellaeon's eyes. Wasn't Pellaeon supposed to be dead by this age? But no, that belonged to the Prime Line. The what? He blinked a few times, confused by the churning knowledge of alternate realities within his mind.

"Luke?" Pellaeon asked. "Luke Skywalker?"

The old Sith considered for a moment, as if trying to recall something from very long ago. "That name has no meaning for me," the pilot replied.

"I see," Pellaeon said. "Darth."

The Sith Lord nodded shallowly. He had spent many centuries, altogether, in the court of the Queen, and in her later years the court spoke Ancient Sith. In that tongue, that was his proper title. The Sith Lords of the court of Queen Dije all called each other Darth and Darthe, in the latter part of her reign. "Yes," he said quietly.

Pellaeon turned to the leader of the stormtrooper squad. "Get someone to assign him quarters." Then he spoke to Lord Luke. "We must strategize. But there appears to be something wrong with your memory. You are the greatest pilot in the galaxy, and you showed up here unable to remember how to land. Please allow my medical staff to examine you."

"As you wish," Lord Luke replied. He left with the nervous doctor.

Pellaeon got on the comm right from the hangar bay and summoned his officers to the conference room near his flag cabin. His previous plans were not important now. This was a truly unexpected development. The medicos would tell him if that was really Luke, or at least if it was a DNA match. But he had no doubt. How had the man aged 30 years in the few months since Pellaeon had last seen him, in one of those interminable meetings just before Jacen had edged him out of the triumvirate? Well, Pellaeon had seen Emperor Palpatine's face on several occasions. They say the Emperor had destroyed his looks until he no longer looked human by using too much Dark Side energy. Perhaps that had happened to Luke, too.

Pellaeon and his officers assembled around the conference table. Rather than try to explain what had happened, he played the recording of the conversation between the two ships, and then the recording from the hangar bay's security camera.

The flag captain spoke first. "If you intend to use this, this is a very dangerous game to play. Suppose his memory recovers?"

"Even if it does not, it's still dangerous," Pellaeon replied. "He is a Dark Lord of the Sith, and clearly as insane as Joruus C'Baoth. But we have a chance now. I did not see any way to derail the Galactic Alliance's slide toward… whatever it is that's coming. Chaos. Tyranny. War. Endless coups de tat. We were stumbling in the dark, before."

"Hardly that, sir," said a commodore, architect of the current strategy.

"We could not restore the Empire without getting into a war, not with nothing but ships and Stormtroopers with which to fight. But this chance, this is another thing entirely."

"So you intend to go along with this Emperor business?" asked the flag captain.

"What would you suggest instead? Tell him he's insane and try to hold him in the medical bay? Put him back in his ship and send him on his way, to become the pawn of some other, less altruistic possible Emperor? Try to kill him? You all saw him. Whatever he is, whoever he is, I have no doubt he is truly a Sith. I saw him use the Force. Would any of you have tried to do any of that to Lord Vader?"

Down the table, one of the officers unconsciously touched his neck. He had met Lord Vader, once.

The comm pinged. "Yes?"

The doctor reported, "The DNA is a match. He is Luke Skywalker, and I find no evidence of replicative fading."

"Meaning what, exactly?"

"Meaning he isn't a clone, sir. He's the real deal."

"His mental state?" asked Admiral Pellaeon.

"Confused, sir. Agitated at times, but he seems to get it under control pretty quickly."

"Send him up," Pellaeon ordered. "Flag level conference room."

"Yes, sir."

Pellaeon switched off the comm. "Well, gentlemen. It appears we are about to restore the Empire."


	13. Chapter 13

The Final Iteration

Chapter 13

White-hot explosions blossomed in space, gasses expanding and then falling to nothingness as fire consumed them. Out of scale, larger than the real stars behind them, the destruction looked like nova flares – like the stars that had fallen victim to the Sun Crusher, when Kyp served the Dark Lord Exar Kun.

And where exactly had that memory come from? Lord Luke shook it off. There would be time enough to examine his latest returning memory later. Right now he was trying for a vision of the very near future, or a memory of it, or whatever it was he got when he knew what had happened in another timeline.

He stretched out with his feelings. The Force flowed for him everywhere, even in the depths of interstellar space, where the only life around to generate the Force was the crews of mighty ships, huge vessels of warfare that nonetheless seemed like little crabs crawling on a vast beach compared to the life that was a planet.

"There." Lord Luke pointed to a section on the holo image of the battle projected in the air above the command well on the flag bridge. "Co-ordinates ten twenty nine, vector eleven mark fourteen. The enemy reinforcements will be there."

"When?" Pellaeon asked, although he knew from experience he was unlikely to get an exact answer.

"Soon," Lord Luke said, shrugging one shoulder somewhat apologetically. He lowered his voice and added, "At least, that's where they appeared in another war in another timeline. We weren't here, though."

"They were fighting someone else with similar tactics," Pellaeon stated, more for the benefit of his flag captain and other officers than to talk out his conclusion. Pellaeon had grasped Lord Luke's tenuous hold on his visions, or whatever they were, probably better than Lord Luke would like.

If he thought he could conceal it from Lord Luke, Pellaeon would have designated one officer to watch Lord Luke to see if he started acting odd. Well, more odd than usual. The moment he remembered who he really was, this might all be over. But only the very strong willed, the driven, the obsessed, could conceal their surface thoughts and intentions from the fallen Jedi. So Pellaeon watched Lord Luke himself.

A second before the battle computer picked it up and projected it into the holo image, out the transparisteel window of the flag bridge there was a flicker of pseudomotion, and a fleet jumped out of hyperspace.

"Fire," Pellaeon said.

The Star Destroyer's laser batteries opened up on the newcomers before they fully materialized and got their shields up, and the red beams of annihilation devastated them. Ships broke apart before engaging Pellaeon's fleet at all, and the survivors fled.

"Pursue and mop up," Pellaeon ordered. He turned the remains of the operation over to his flag captain. Then commented, "Right where you said they would be, Lord Luke. Well done."

"Thank you, Your Highness."

"This should draw out the GA forces to protect Commenor," Pellaeon said, in a school lecture tone that made it clear he was again speaking for the benefit of his officers, so they might understand his grand plan. "And then we strike at our main objective."

"Someone is coming," Lord Luke said. "A new player. I haven't seen this in another timeline."

"Ship approaching," confirmed the scan officer. "Cruiser class. ID's as the Nal Danka, Admiral." The officer winced slightly, catching himself using the wrong title, but must have decided that correcting himself would only draw attention to the error.

The comm officer reported, "They're requesting permission to dock, sir."

Pellaeon looked inquiringly at Lord Luke.

Lord Luke shook his head. "There's someone familiar aboard that ship. But whoever it is, they're shielding themselves, and that's all I can get. From those in charge of the ship, I sense ambition, powerlust, intense curiosity, but no particular hostile intent, at least not towards us."

"Let him land, comm officer," Pellaeon ordered.

"I must meditate," Lord Luke announced, and whirled off of the bridge.

He never asked permission to enter or leave anywhere, a habit that Pellaeon asked his officers to tolerate on grounds that Darth Tiemus was not in fact a military officer. Not that anyone on board, including Pellaeon, was inclined to attempt to tell the Dark Lord of the Sith how to behave. It was Darth's own conceit to call Pellaeon his Emperor and kneel down to him. But it was quite clear that the power behind the throne could just as easily have the throne himself if he wanted it. Pellaeon could only hope Darth Tiemus would last as long as Darth Vader had, and his Emperor would meet a better end.

In his quarters, which counted as sumptuous only in contrast to lesser officers' quarters onboard the Executor, Lord Luke paced furiously around. Who was on that ship? Not everyone with strong mental shields was either a Jedi or a Sith; some people generated them naturally, and there were other Force traditions in the galaxy. The Witches of Dathomir, for example.

That presence felt both familiar and unfamiliar. He was suddenly bone sure that he had felt that presence the last time he altered time. Whoever was coming had been with him when he had his memories intact. No – no, not with him. Fighting against him.

Lord Luke's memories cascaded. It was the Sith searcher. Here, of all places. One would think a breakaway retro-Imperial battle fleet would be a relatively safe place to hide from assassins.

He groaned and put a hand to his forehead. Memories assaulted him. "This isn't where I'm supposed to be. This isn't what I'm supposed to be doing. Or no: I am supposed to stop Caedus. But this isn't how I'm supposed to be doing it. I'm supposed to be using my visions! To affect his! To draw his obsessive attention to me so he won't notice Jaina's knife in his back!"

He started to rush toward the door, to go meet the ship when it landed inside the Star Destroyer's landing bay. "No," he inhaled. "I have my memories again, my purpose. I can't let this happen again. This is the final iteration. I must not use my powers again. At least, not until I figure out how to alter time without wiping my memories temporarily. For that, I don't know what I need. A physicist? Ancient Sith writings? Figure that out later. Right now, right now I have to figure out a way to tell myself what I'm supposed to be doing if I accidentally tamper with time again. I didn't mean to do it at all the last time. I froze time, I didn't even slip into another timeline at all, or maybe I did, one where the explosion didn't kill the child. Doesn't matter, doesn't matter. Think! How can I send myself a message I can't lose?"

He glanced around his quarters. Put a message in his pocket? That would only last until he changed his clothes. Carve a message into his arm. With what? He didn't have a knife.

"No time, no time. I'm a master of time – I was Darth Tiemus, for a few weeks—and I have no time to get a knife. The Sith assassin is coming for me now. I might have to alter time at any moment, and my memories might be lost for good this time."

Desperate, Lord Luke unclipped his lightsaber from his belt. He sat straight down on the floor, letting his legs cross under him. His cape followed him down a moment later. He opened the saber's control panel and realized he needed a tool he didn't have. He bit through part of one of his fingernails to make the right sized little stylus.

His hand wasn't steady. Lord Luke took a moment for a deep, calming Jedi breath. Then he went to work again. He adjusted the beam from his saber down to a tiny, short, narrow focus. A light-scribe. He activated it, and an inch long green blade popped into being with a sound completely unlike its regular activating noise.

Lord Luke deactivated it and set it down only long enough to unfasten his left sleeve. His flesh arm, but there was no help for that. He couldn't write with his left hand.

Reactivating the light scribe, he took another moment to engage a Jedi pain suppression technique. Because this was going to hurt like a—

"Stop Caedus," Lord Luke whispered. "No, that's not good enough. Stop Caedus by controlling his visions. Yes, that's it. But is there a shorter way to say it? Altering his visions? Is that fewer letters? Letters. Codes. Codes!"

Lord Luke cackled like a madman. "Leave the vowels out. Stp Cds by ltrng hs vsns. No, no, I might not understand that. Make it clear, absolutely clear, so I can understand it at once. The sooner I remember my purpose, the sooner I remember everything else."

Lord Luke squinted a little, unconsciously bracing himself in anticipation of pain, despite using the Jedi pain suppression technique. Then he slowly, carefully burned the first letter, S, into the inner side of his left forearm.

He swore feelingly in Ancient Sith. Pain suppression or no, that really hurt. The near surface of the skin was where the nerve endings were. Somewhere, sometime, he had heard that using a lightsaber in this way, slowly burning through skin, was a form of torture.

He inhaled sharply, readying himself to continue. He smelled his own charred flesh. Reinforcing the pain suppression, Lord Luke wrote his message to himself in his arm, slowly and painstakingly.

He barely remembered to restore his lightsaber to its normal focal length before putting it back on his belt. He stood up and headed for the 'fresher to run some cool water over his arm.

Oh, Emperor's black bones, that hurt. Then Lord Luke swayed on his feet. That particular epithet had been Mara's favorite curse.

Abruptly his physical pain was swallowed in a worse pain, a soul-deep pain. He wept.

But there was still a Sith assassin coming onboard. He had to be ready. He went and ran the water on his arm, even while reaching out in the form to that familiar/ not familiar presence. Someone he had known in another timeline, perhaps.

He found it—her, he realized. A presence of rage of hate, barely controlled personal fury. A Sith, yes. But most Sith were not quite this far gone into berserker wrath, even if very few of them had the icy calm self control that Vader had had. This was personal, somehow. Well, no matter. He would find out who she was soon enough.

"I'm ready for you now," Lord Luke whispered.


	14. Chapter 14

The Final Iteration

Chapter 14

Lord Luke slipped into the hangar bay hooded and cloaked. He went to stand by Emperor Pellaeon, who acknowledged him with a distracted glance.

Four people exited the bulk cruiser, which was a tight fit even for the enormous Star Destroyer's hangar. One, a dark-haired, jowly middle aged man, walked like a leader. Two men trailed him like aides or lieutenants, and a woman in black padded softly after them.

She riveted Lord Luke's attention, for she was a tattooed Sith. He had not seen her in lifetimes, but he knew her immediately. She was Piekke. One half of the terrible Twins. She could only be here for one reason: to slowly kill him on the orders of Queen Dije. So, Dije was aware of his return, somehow, although he had tried to stay out of the way of the Sith. If Piekke failed, there would be more assassins. But none as good at her job—or as evil to her victims.

The black haired man addressed Pellaeon. "I represent Condu. Our neighbors the Trolynar have taken up with the Corellian rebels. We were going to side with the GA, but then we heard about you. You're invincible, and rumor has it, it's because of an infallible battle computer program called Tiemus. Condu is prepared to join your forces in exchange for this program."

Pellaeon cleared his throat. "I'm afraid your source was mistaken. Tiemus is not something that can be copied. Well, not without a Spaarti cylinder and a ten year lead time, not that he would be likely to co-operate with a cloning operation. However, we could give you access to Tiemus's battle predictions, if you join with us."

"Hmm. I'll have to consult with my government. Who is Tiemus, then?"

"Consult first," Pellaeon responded. "His identity is a secret known only to Imperial officers. You must be an ally first, before you see his face. You may speak with him, though." Pellaeon gestured to the cloaked figure by his side. "This is Darth Tiemus."

"This is Lord Luke," spat Piekke, stepping forward. "Darth Tiemus," she sneered. "Have you descended into the debased tradition of only-two? You were a real Sith, once."

"I still am," Lord Luke replied, taking a few steps towards her. "So, this is the real reason for this envoy. No doubt he thinks his mission is real."

The dark haired man and his aides turned to stare at her.

"You accuse me of sarav?" Piekke replied. "You?"

"I accuse you of nothing, Piekke. Are you here to fight or to talk?"

"I am here to kill. But to let you know why first."

Pellaeon said, "Clear the flight deck," and prudently retreated along with his men.

"I know why. Because I am the master of time, and Queen Dije cannot tolerate my power."

Piekke's face changed, becoming a mask of hate. "Because you killed my brother!"

"The other Sith? At the bomb site? I did no such thing. I merely moved him closer to his bomb. I was trying to save innocent lives. I never expected him to trigger the device while he was standing right next to it. Sacrificing oneself is not the way the Twins are known to kill."

"He didn't trigger it!" Piekke shrieked. Tears fell from her eyes. "We both had remote triggers. I didn't know he'd been moved!"

"I see. So you killed him."

"No!" Screamed Piekke, and the lights in the hangar flickered, and a nearby astromech droid popped in a cloud of smoke.

Lord Luke smelled electrical fire, and he smiled. "Yes, Piekke, you killed your brother."

"No!" Sparks crawled on her hands.

"Just as you killed all the other people, total innocents, who died in your bombing. Heartlessly. Thoughtlessly."

"No! You killed him, it was you! You made it happen!" Force-lighting crackled around her like St. Elmo's Fire climbing the rigging of a sailing ship on a wind-tossed sea.

"Cast, Piekke," Lord Luke urged. "What are you waiting for? You have achieved breakthrough. You've become a Dark Lady of the Sith. Cast the lightning!"

"Why? Why do you want me to?"

"What Sith parent does not wish for the day that his child's hatred blossoms?"

"You were never a parent to me! Or my brother!" Tossing her head to rid herself of hair sticking to her tears, Piekke raised her hands and cast the Force-lightning.

It hit Lord Luke with all the intensity of the blast that Emperor Palpatine had once cast at him. But the mature Dark Lord was a master of this power, unlike the boy he had been. Lord Luke endured it, and remained upright.

He did not stand stoically as if it did not affect him, though. He screamed and hunched over, fists and eyes tightly closed, until Piekke exhausted herself, and it was over.

When he straightened back up, his hood fell back, and the three frightened men who had come with Piekke gasped in astonishment. They fled back into their cruiser, and the engines rumbled as they prepared to leave.

Hooting and red lights in the hangar bay announced the ship's imminent departure. Piekke looked around dubiously, as if searching for a handhold or a convenient door.

Lord Luke, congratulating himself on being more familiar with starships, ignored the warning klaxons. The bay would not depressurize when the cruiser left it, assuming the shielding was manipulated correctly, and there was no reason why it should not be, since it was an automated process.

But it turned out that was not what Piekke was looking for. She spotted the one-man fighter in which Lord Luke had arrived, and ran for it.

Lord Luke tripped her with the Force. Piekke pushed back, and they escalated their Force-shoves to hurling loose equipment at each other.

"Running, Piekke?" Lord Luke asked. "You haven't killed me yet."

"Not until I'm off this ship," Piekke replied.

Lord Luke tired of the game, and reached into Piekke's mind. She cried out and fell flat on the deck.

"A shadow bomb," Lord Luke said. "Do you know, the Jedi pioneered that technique in the Vong War. I was the one who told Queen Dije about it." It was a method of detonating a missile that did not use any signals that could be tracked or interfered with by technological means. Missiles were released into space, guided into position with the Force, activated and detonated with the Force.

"I meant for that fool of a Condruan to be deep in negotiations with Admiral Pellaeon when I left quietly, taking you and everybody else here down at once." Her voice shook from the trauma of Lord Luke's invasion of her mind.

"A good plan," Lord Luke said. "But I am not like other opponents you have killed, Piekke. Your other bomb had already gone off when I was first aware of it. I am the lord of time, Darth Tiemus indeed. A title, not a name. I simply rewound time and had it all come out differently."

"Rewound—then you could save my brother if you wanted to!" Piekke accused, climbing unsteadily to her feet.

"I could," Lord Luke agreed. "But every time I use my powers, I erase my memories, and risk changing things I did not mean to change. I will only use them now in an emergency. Such as to save my own life."

"You bastard!"

"Unproven," Lord Luke said. "I still don't know who my mother was, so I don't know if she was married to my father. In any case, you and Piker are my children. My first children, as I understand it. I started all this time traveling to save my son. Ben. But Piker was my firstborn son. I ought to feel for him too, shouldn't I? Except for the fact that he died trying to kill me."

Piekke let loose a string of terrible curses in Ancient Sith.

Lord Luke laughed, and strode toward her. "I feel no attachment to Piker. In that way, perhaps I have finally achieved what the Old Order of the Jedi demanded from its members. Absence of attachment. It makes it so much easier to do what must be done."

"Evil, horrible Jedi!" Piekke screamed.

"Yes, I am that," Lord Luke agreed, mouth quirked in an odd smile. He stood close to her, and there was a light in his eyes. He touched her cheek, gently, tickling her facial down.

There was something in his eyes that frightened Piekke so much that her battle-rage evaporated. In a small, shaky voice, she protested, "I'm your daughter."

"You look like Leia," he whispered. And she did, despite her forehead tattoo and black Sith bodysuit. The family resemblance was uncanny.

In once lifetime, Lord Luke had been married to Leia. Or, another Luke had, and Lord Luke had absorbed him. Absorbed his soul, and assimilated his memories. He had had many wonderful years with Leia Skywalker. Many busy days saving the universe, and many busy nights…

His hand drifted down her face toward her neck.

"Father, please!" Piekke pleaded.

Of all the things Piekke could have said to him, that was the one thing that reminded Lord Luke who he really was. That he was still Luke Skywalker underneath it all. It was what Luke had said to Vader while the Emperor was torturing him with Force-lightning.

Lord Luke snapped back to the here and now. He converted the gesture to lifting her chin to look deep into her eyes.

"I can't risk altering time again to save Piker," Lord Luke whispered. "But I can save you. My daughter."

Then he shoved inside her again, overwhelmed her defenses and penetrated deep into her core. It was sarav, not sar. But the pain was real, although the violation was not physical.

She screamed and fell down clutching her head at the violation.

Lord Luke burned through her brain, destroying as he went. He saved the skills, as best he could while erasing how they had been acquired, although he singed quite a few things that were only tangentially connected to memory, and to the Sith way. But he wiped out all her memories. Her whole life. Everything that made Piekke who she was.

This was what Kyp had done to Qwi Xux, and what Lady Dije had done to those who made the purple tears drug, and what Queen Dije had done to Lord Luke. The process was the same, but the intent was the opposite. Kyp and Dije had meant to remove skills and leave the personality intact. Lord Luke meant to remove all the formative events of Piekke's life, and leave her a blank slate. An emotional child, for him to raise as a daughter, but with all the power of skill of a Dark Lady of the Sith.

Piekke realized what he was doing. In her last strength, she reached out in the Force to the shadow bomb.

The shadow bombs used in the Vong War were mostly proton torpedoes fired from fighter craft. They were effective against corralskippers, and even against larger ships en masse, but they were not very big bombs. Piekke had made a very big bomb. She had anchored it to the outside of the bulk cruiser, and had detached and maneuvered it into place on the Executor's hull while the cruiser was coming into dock. When it blew, it vaporized the Star Destroyer's white hull plating and took out three decks, down to the engineering level. Piekke had positioned her bomb very carefully. When it reached the engines, the bomb pierced the containment bottle and touched off the reactors.

The Executor blew up in two slightly delayed explosions. The bomb, and then, a second later, the engines. The blast took out three nearby ships, including the cruiser; scattered debris through lightyears of space; and left an expanding ring of power hurtling outwards from the vacuum at the center of the explosion.

Lord Luke was no longer on the Executor. Neither was Piekke.

Lord Luke did not know exactly what had just happened, or how he had ended up in a StealthX with an unconscious woman in his lap. He only had enough presence of mind to reach awkwardly for the stick when the shock wave hit. Trying to maneuver with Piekke dozing on top of him was more of a challenge than even his incredible piloting skills could match, and the X-Wing tumbled end over end in space.

"So," he whispered, "Pelleaon dies on schedule after all. But not at Ben's hands."

And what exactly did that mean? What was he doing out here? Why did he have Piekke with him? Wasn't she the most feared Sith in all of space?

He knew how the Twins killed. The Holonet News had carried vid of some of their gaudier victims. They had progressed quickly from simply turning people inside out like their feline victims in their youth, to tortures that took weeks to kill. The Twins never took less than 3 days to kill their targets.

Wait—hadn't she just tried to blow him up with a bomb? Twice?

Why would she break her long tradition of cruelty to offer Lord Luke a quick death? And why would he save her?

Oh, yes. Right. She was his daughter.

That was what he was doing out here. Saving his daughter. Of course.

He had never had a chance to be a father to her. He had not known she was his daughter on any of the timelines in which he had arrived early on Sith-ta and met her as a child. Now he could fix that. Nothing was more important to Lord Luke than his children. He was going to save her. Save her from herself. Save her from her own bomb. Save her from the Dark Side.

Lord Luke picked an uninhabited world and pointed the StealthX toward safety.


	15. Chapter 15

The Final Iteration

Chapter 15

Piekke came awake with a start. Her eyes snapped open, and she saw the cramped cockpit of a Stealth-X fighter in front of her, and the distorted stars of hyperspace. The stick was right up in her business. She tried to move a hand to rub her eyes and her elbow banged against the instrument panel. She realized she was piled haphazardly onto the pilot's lap.

She didn't turn around to see who it was; Piekke could sense him in the Force, old, powerful, an immense dark mind of frightening strength. She could not recall his name, but his was not the mind she was used to being around. She could not remember who her partner was either. She only knew she was afraid.

Piekke screamed.

Fear brought her power in the Dark Side, and with it, her newly gained ability to call the lightning. She was not yet in control of the Noble Gift, and it came to her hands without her volition. Force-lightning spiraled around inside the fighter, shorting out instruments with a pop and a scatter of sparks.

Piekke shrieked, "Who are you? Where are you taking me? Who am I?"

"Not the ship!" the man screamed, his voice almost as high-pitched as her's. He pushed aside her flailing arm and seized the lever of the hyperspace control, and the ship reverted to normal space. "Get in control of the lightning, Piekke!"

"Is that my name?" she shrilled. Lightning still poured from her hands, darkened more instruments on the panel.

"Bottle it up!" the man screamed. Then he switched from Modern to Ancient Sith and let off a string of curses that Piekke dimly felt belonged in the mouths of her—enemies? Play partners? Victims?

Piekke was too confused to attempt to get in control of the lightning. "Who are you?" she asked again, weaker and more plaintive this time.

The man grabbed her hands and absorbed the Force-lightning into his own body. He cried out as it grounded out in him. His muscles all went rigid beneath her as the electricity activated all the muscle fibers. Then he shrieked in pain as all his muscles cramped up.

Whoever he was, he was sacrificing himself to save the ship – to save her. He could just as easily have forced her hands back and sent the Force-lightning coursing back into her, but he took it into himself instead. She could feel his concern for her life in the Force. She could feel his love.

Something happened then that had not happened in all the years of Piekke's life, although she could not remember and did not know it: Piekke's heart filled with compassion.

It was not an emotion compatible with the power of the Dark Side. The Force-lightning ceased to flow.

The man inhaled painfully. He reached out a shaking hand to the instrument panel and assessed the damage. "We can still make it to that small outer planet. I don't think the landing cycle will activate, but it's alright. Once we're at the planet I can use the Force to slow our descent. Maybe even use the Noble Gift to power up some of these controls, complete fried circuits. You can help. I'll show you how."

"Who are you?" she asked again, this time in a more normal voice.

"Luke. But you can call me daddy."

"You're my father?"

"Yes. I don't think I was around much before. I remember holding a baby, but it wasn't you. It had red hair. But I mean to make up for that now. We'll be fine, Piekke."

"You don't remember either?"

"I think that's normal. I don't remember much, but I remember remembering. I remember getting back memories slowly each time. I think this is a normal reaction to the time distortion."

"Is that a power we have?"

"Yes, I think so. And, uh, I'm sorry I yelled at you. A Jedi isn't supposed to get angry. That leads to the Dark Side."

For some reason, he felt it was vitally important that he decant as much Jedi philosophy as possible to her while she was still in the brief period of memory loss following time distortion, so he spent the long normal space approach to the outer planet of the system ahead of them telling her as much as he could remember, which was quite a lot, once he got going.

With Piekke powering some of the controls – which she suspected was more for her to practice her control of the Noble Gift that because he actually needed her help – Luke managed a controlled crash landing in a peaceful green meadow surrounded by trees.

Once on the ground, he popped the canopy and the two of them got out and stretched. The ground was spongy, and the planet's air had a pleasant scent.

"I saw some ruins from the air," Lord Luke said. "But I don't think there's anybody around." He opened the small cargo compartment and was gratified to find a standard military issue survival kit inside.

He started unloading a few things: a food case, a power generator, a canister of water treatment tablets, and other necessities. "This reminds me of Dagobah," Lord Luke said. "I crashed my ship into the water in the swamp, and then unloaded a lot of stuff like this. I remember Yoda. Looking back, I think he may have gone a little funny in the head because of being alone for so long."

Lord Luke smiled at the pleasant memories. He shared all he could remember of Yoda with Piekke as the two of them shared a ration bar. Lord Luke pantomimed Yoda's reaction to his ration bar at his Dagobah camp, and imitated Yoda's voice. Piekke giggled in a most un-Sithlike fashion.

It was a good start, Lord Luke thought. Then he wondered, a start on what? Yes, he was trying to model Jedi behavior and tell her all about the Jedi, but wasn't his daughter already a Jedi?

The meaning of the tattoo on her forehead finally dawned on him. He tried to switch the conversation from Modern Sith to Basic, and found that Piekke did speak it a little, but not as well as her native language. So. That was what he was here for. To save Piekke from the Dark Side.

"What is it?" Piekke asked, sensing the shift in his mood.

"I think, I think you were not a Jedi before. But you will be now. The time distortion memory loss is a chance to start over. A fresh beginning."

"What was I before, that I need a fresh beginning?" Piekke asked.

"I'm not sure," Lord Luke said. "It's coming back in little bits."

"I feel something missing," Piekke said. "An emptiness inside me."

Her brother, Lord Luke realized. But this was not the time to go into all that. "The light side of the Force fulfills us," he said, not quite a lie, precisely. From a certain point of view. Lord Luke winced and directed his attention outward. "These survival supplies are only meant to last a little while, until a downed pilot can be picked up after a battle. But we'll be here for some time, while we make repairs. And in any case this is an excellent place for Jedi training. And for connecting with the Force. We should investigate some local food sources."

He got up and started looking at shrubs and flowers, to see if anything looked edible. Piekke followed him for a bit, her eyes on the sky, perhaps looking for game birds.

They made their way into the woods, and came to a river, and heard a rushing sound from up ahead. The followed the stream, and came out into a clearing. A broad white waterfall sent a rainbow across a deep green cleft. It fell into a broad pool of pale turquoise, and Piekke laughed and stripped and jumped into the water.

Lord Luke, startled, stared for just a moment. "She looks like Leia," he thought. Then he blushed and looked away. "That's your daughter," he told himself firmly. If he couldn't be a gentleman to his own daughter, how was he supposed to save her from the Dark Side of the Force?

Piekke laughed again, and Lord Luke felt that he had never heard her laugh before they came here. He glanced up for a moment, to find Piekke's form all but lost in the spray as he stood under the waterfall, showering off.

"Come on in, the water's fine!"

He considered keeping watch for predatory animals or the seemingly nonexistent native population. He could do that better with the Force than with his eyes. He considered his dignity, and propriety, and the fact that there was probably only one spare uniform in the survival supplies. And then he shrugged and hung his clothes up on a tree branch and jumped in, too.

He had Sith writing on his arm. In wonder, he read it off, and remembered his true purpose. Certitude filled him. This isolated planet was an excellent place to spend long amounts of time having Force-visions, and directing Caedus's visions. And he could instruct Piekke in the ways of the Jedi as well.

Piekke swam over to him. If there were fish in the warm, steaming, slightly smoky smelling water, they left the two of them alone.

"I don't know how to start over," Piekke said.

"That's OK. I do. I've lost my memories many times."

"How do you deal with it?" Piekke asked.

Lord Luke raised his arm from the water and showed her his purpose marks. "I left myself a message. That's all I need, just to know what my purpose is. All the rest I can reinvent."

"What's my purpose?"

"Once, Piekke, you were a professional assassin, the special operative a head of state, like my late wife Mara. But the life circumstances that made you a killer have been lifted from you. You can start over as someone new, someone not consumed by hate and bitterness. You can be happy."

"What kind of purpose is that? To be happy?"

"The best kind. A purpose you can self-define. Rest now, Piekke. The Force will lead you to right action in whatever circumstances you find yourself. What those circumstances are, is for you to decide, based on whatever makes you happiest."

Piekke shook her head. "I wish I had some specific purpose you like do. Some sort of mission."

Lord Luke scanned the water's edge, looking for possibly edible animals. He did not tell Piekke that he remembered what her mission was, and that it was to kill Lord Luke. He was afraid that when she found out more about her old life, he was going to hear the dreaded words 'why didn't you tell me.' But Piekke had a chance to become a Jedi, if Lord Luke didn't screw it up for her. She could deal with her old life once she was secure in her new one.

For the first time, he really understood all of Kenobi's lying, manipulative ways. Some things really are best left for maturity to deal with them.


	16. Chapter 16

The Final Iteration

Chapter 16

Lord Luke poked a stick into the loose dirt in the doorway of the ruined building. "No, I don't think these ruins have been here for centuries. There's nothing growing in here."

Piekke said, "But they're covered in a meter of dust."

"I think this is ash, Piekke." Lord Luke peered into the building. Like the others they had explored today, it was filled with tumbled furniture and pottery, and its shelves had nothing of interest. "Remember the taste of the water in the bathing pool? Well, you were right, the ruins aren't especially dangerous. But this planet might not be the paradise it seems."

"Volcanic activity?" Piekke asked.

"We'd sense it in the Force if we were about to be in danger. I don't think we really need to worry about the volcano erupting."

"If it did, could you stop time?"

Lord Luke shrugged. "I suppose. But every time I use my power, I lose my memory again."

"There's got to be a way around that." Piekke poked her head into the doorway. This building looked like all the others. Piekke was covered with ash to the waist, from searching thoroughly through one of the buildings, but she felt no need to repeat the exercise.

"Well, I've been thinking about it." Lord Luke tossed down the stick and made his way to an empty window in the next building. "A sort of thought experiment. I seem to lose my memory in the backlash when I alter time throughout the universe. But what if I could create a sort of time pocket?"

"A localized phenomenon?" Piekke asked. "You should try it and see if it works."

"I'm afraid to. If the experiment fails, I'll lose my memory again."

"You told me a Jedi isn't ruled by fear."

"Yes, yes. We came to the ruins, didn't we?" Luke clamped down on the whine that still tried to climb into his voice on occasion, despite his advanced age.

"There's nothing here we can use to fix the ship," Piekke said. "But I'm glad we came. Otherwise we'd still be wondering."

"True," Lord Luke allowed. Through the Force, he felt her emotions darken. "There's no need to feel guilty about the ship, Piekke. Anybody might panic the first time they get amnesia."

"Oh—that wasn't what was bothering me," Piekke said. "I was just thinking about all the people here. The first place we searched, all those bones. A whole civilization wiped out."

"Yes, it's a sad thing," agreed Lord Luke. He tried hard to contain the spike of secret delight he felt every time Piekke showed compassion. This was really working. He was getting through to her, or at least, she no longer remembered why the old Piekke took pleasure only in others' pain.

Apparently, Piekke felt his satisfaction anyway. "What?" she demanded.

But then she was distracted by the hexaped. "Grazer," she alerted him. She made the calculation in a split second. The brown pelted animal was close, caught by surprise in the relatively confined space of the maze of ruins. It lumbered off with a great bunching of the muscles of its six legs, but it was not fast enough to outrun Piekke.

The other calculation delayed her only a fraction of a second more: how hungry was she? How many of the food bars from the ship's survival rations did they have left? Too few, that was the answer, especially if they didn't have enough wire to repair the X-Wing.

She had no weapons; like many Sith, she had disdained them as the props of inferior minds. Piekke no longer had this Sith cultural conceit, but she still needed to weapon to kill a beast.

Piekke reached out in the Force and found its heart. She wrapped a mental hand around it. But before she squeezed, she thought the animal might feel pain. So instead she loosed her hold on the heart and felt for the more subtle presence of its simple mind.

"Sleep," she whispered. She blinked her own eyes slowly, breathing deeply and suffusing Jedi calm throughout her being, and then projected that calm to the animal.

It stopped running, stumbled to a halt, yawned and shut its eyes, sleeping standing up. Only then did Piekke stop its heart. It fell over.

"Well done, Piekke," Lord Luke said.

"Not yet it isn't," she joked, flashing him a grin.

"Huh. A pun in Basic. Nice. You're making as much progress with your language as your are with your Jedi training," Lord Luke praised.

"Thank you. Now make a fire and let's cook this beast."

Lord Luke returned her smile. He collected sticks by calling them to him from all directions with the Force, and started the cookfire with the heat from his lightsaber.

Lord Luke put some meat on a stick and began roasting it. He felt a slight chill when Piekke automatically started skinning the velvety fur off the hexaped with her small utility knife.

"What?" she snapped.

"I didn't say anything."

"You felt at me."

"Did anybody—no, that's a dumb thing to say. I was about to say, did anybody ever tell you that telepathy can be a pain in the neck. Sorry."

"Why aren't my memories coming back? Yours seem to be almost completely intact now."

"I don't know."

Piekke finished skinning the animal, and then looked around, completely nonplussed. "What do I do now? I have skills I can't remember learning, and I usually go with them when I feel one emerging. That's the only way to find out what I can do, without remembering anything. But this one just stopped. I don't know what to do next."

Piekke stared forlornly at her small, bloody knife as a light rain began to fall. Drops hissed into the fire, and Lord Luke conjured a Force shield above the flames to protect them from the wet. Smoke billowed around the shield and made an odd shape in the air.

Piekke asked, "How to do I tan this skin? I want to use this fur as a blanket. The nights are turning chilly. Maybe the season is about to change."

"I don't know," Lord Luke said. "Maybe when we get back to camp, we dig up some instructions on the Holoweb."

"I thought long range communications were out," Piekke said.

"They are. I can access the Holoweb, but I can't talk to anyone. That's just as well, though. This is a good planet for Jedi training; we don't need to leave."

"Yet," Piekke said. "You and your visions can stay as long as you like, but I'll need to leave eventually. I still feel an empty place inside me. The Light hasn't filled it all. I think I need people. A community."

Or just one person, Lord Luke thought, who is dead. But he kept that thought to himself. "Be careful about trying to rejoin the Sith community, Piekke."

"I won't fall to the Dark Side. It holds no appeal for me."

"Good, but that's not what I meant." The old Piekke had a fearsome reputation, but there was no need to go into all that. Let her have her innocence a little while longer. "You're a Dark Lady now, according to Sith custom. If you display your new talent to the Sith, they'll want to give you the cheek tattoos, and there are some who might try to fawn on you and become your new gang, like in the old days before Queen Dije made all the Dark Lords work together in her court."

"I wouldn't mind having the tattoos," Piekke said. "As you've told me yourself, I was born a Sith, and initiated a Sith, and I'll always be a Sith, even if I never use the Dark Side again. You have the tattoos. You were initiated a Sith too, and you'll always be a Sith yourself."

"And you wouldn't mind having a gang either? But they'd be sycophants drawn to your power and reputation, not real friends."

"Is that what my mother was to Queen Dije?"

"Ah. I'm not really sure. I think, in all my lifetimes, I never had one in which I chose to stay aboard Sith Raider after my initiation. Not even the ones in which I got tattooed then, instead of later when I showed up at the Queen's court after defeating Caedus. In all my lifetimes, I keep having to be healed by Ongreya. Over and over again. Sometimes I hate having to relive my life again and again. But when I changed something, trying to find the perfect future, I tried to only change one thing, and recreate everything else the same. Do you know how many times I've had to lose my hand?"

"No, and neither do you," Piekke said. "I know this story, daddykins."

"Right." Lord Luke turned the meat on the stick.

Piekke let the rain clean the blood from her knife and then put it away. "The next step still isn't coming to me." She felt him feeling darker in the Force. "What?"

"Uh, maybe that's all you did."

"I skinned them and someone else tanned them? Who? You know something, don't you."

"No, I meant, nobody tanned anything." Lord Luke had not wanted to get onto the subject of the Twins' methods of killing, but he had to deflect her from the subject of the empty hole in her heart left by her brother's death. He knew he may well be making things worse by concealing this important information – his mind flashed to an image of Ben Kenobi – but he just couldn't tell her she had accidentally killed her twin brother. Her connection to the good side of the Force was still new, and perhaps fragile.

Lord Luke tried some of the meat. "Not bad if you like it rare."

"I think we'd better have it a little more cooked. I found some parasites living just under the animal's skin. Wormlike things."

Lord Luke shivered made an inarticulate noise and put the meat back over the flame. "I can't stand parasites."

"Yes, the droch. I know this story too."

"I'm I getting to be the kind of old geezer who tells 'when I was your age' stories?"

"Yes," Piekke said, with a mischievous twinkle in her eye.

"Well, you tell me a story, then. Tell me what you think the people who lived in these ruins were like. Why they only had this one town, and how they lived, and what they were doing here."

"OK." Piekke started in haltingly, and Lord Luke congratulated himself on avoiding telling her that she and her brother usually took about one or two weeks to skin their victims alive. They kept having to stop and wait for their targets to regain consciousness.

They ate as much meat as they could, and considered leaving the fire and the mess and the pelt outside and taking shelter in a ruined building for night, to avoid the rain and any possible scavengers. But the buildings were choked with mounds of ash, unlike the outsides where it had blown away in the wind, and the fire would probably keep other wild animals away.

So they slept by their kill, planning to eat more of it in the morning. But that proved to be a mistake. Lord Luke woke up with a horrible itch on his back. He didn't have time to connect it with sleeping on the ground next to where Piekke had scraped parasites out from under the skin of the pelt, though, because his attention was drawn to the sky, even as he absently picked up stick to scratch his back with. He couldn't reach, anymore; this old body was stiff, everywhere but his artificial hand.

There was a vapor trail in the sky.

"Piekke. Wake up. Back to camp. Run!"


	17. Chapter 17

The Final Iteration

Chapter 17

By the time they reached the camp, Lord Luke was out of breath. Once again he reminded himself that it was not yet time. This body still had to last a while yet.

Piekke was clutching the smelly fur. Her hair was plastered to her face with sweat and rain. Instead of washing off in the downpour, the ash on her pants had turned into a sort of grayish paste.

Lord Luke eyeballed the camp, and the Stealth-X, to make sure nothing had been disturbed by animals while they were exploring the ruins. Everything was still in place, and not even wet. The clouds had cleared up when they had crested the hill between the ruins and their camp valley.

Then Lord Luke turned his eyes skyward again. The vapor trail had become a pillar of smoke billowing downward from the heavens like a reverse volcanic eruption.

Sunlight glinted on a cylindrical ship with a cone at its top, like a giant syringe in the sky. Lord Luke laughed out loud. "I know that ship! I've flown that ship! That's Old Pointy! We're saved! Ongreya's come to rescue me!"

Piekke draped the fur over a branch and waited eagerly for the ship to land. With her memories gone, she could not remember ever meeting anyone but Lord Luke. She was nearly hopping up and down in excitement.

"We'd better back off," Lord Luke said, taking her hand and pulling her back into the treeline. "Old Pointy lands on retrorockets. If it sets down in the clearing next to the X-Wing, we won't want to be standing too close."

"Your face," Piekke reminded him.

"Oh—of course. Thank you." Lord Luke let go of the power of the Force and flowed into the White Current. He knew better than to reach for it; his hand was too heavy. His mind was too powerful. When he felt the currents flowing around him, he altered the flow ever so slightly. A White Current illusion formed around him: Luke, as he ought to appear in this timeline. His tattoos disappeared, and his hair turned from white to a sort of dull antique gold and tarnished silver. His chronological age in this timeline should be about 60. Not young, but not the withered Sith Lord of his real appearance.

Old Pointy landed in a cloud and a roar. Ongreya stepped out. She was wearing her human seeming, so she appeared to be a young, attractive blonde woman, specifically, the holodrama actress Tindra Chaen. She was wearing her subcasting hat as usual. She no longer wore Jedi robes, but still had a silver lightsaber dangling from her belt. She appeared to be wearing a floaty purple dress set with sparkles at the collar, but that could have been part of the seeming. Who knew what the frog was really wearing under there.

"Ongreya!" Lord Luke called, striding forward out of the treeline, his black cape flapping behind him like a pennant on a battlefield. "Thank goodness! I'm not stuck on this rock after all! Please tell me you have spare parts with you!"

"Oh!" Ongreya exclaimed. She reached up and adjusted something in her subcasting hat. "I wasn't expecting to be subcasting on the Jedi channel as well. One moment while I turn that on too."

Lord Luke's wide grin faded to a puzzled smile. "You're here as a Psy Healer?"

"Yes. I'm not here for you, Luke. Although of course I'll be happy to help you with whatever parts you need for your ship."

"Oh." Lord Luke blinked at her in puzzlement. He knew very well there were not that many people on this planet. But he had thought Piekke had been doing very well. Her humane hunt of the grazing animal had shown just had far she had come.

"As I've just told my subscribers on the Psy Healer subcast – this is new to the viewers of the Jedi Subcast," Ongreya half explained to Lord Luke and half narrated for her secondary audience, "I'm here to help a woman who has lost her memory. There is a hole in her heart, and I felt it calling out to me in longing."

"Oh." Lord Luke sighed and gestured Piekke forward. "Come on out," he called.

"OK, Daddykins," Piekke called back, stepping out of the shadow of the trees.

Ongreya's eyes widened. Despite her long experience and self-discipline as a living camera stand, she took a step backward when she saw Piekke. Her hand strayed to the hilt of her lightsaber.

"There's no need for that," Lord Luke said sharply. "You're supposed to heal her, not fight her, remember?"

"I'm here for her?" Ongreya asked incredulously. "You're right. I can feel that she is the source of the psychic pain I followed here. But Luke—the Twins. Dark Lords of the Sith kill themselves just on the rumor the Twins may have targeted them."

"I know," Lord Luke said. "But she doesn't. She's a Jedi, Ongreya. Don't screw this up. Giving her back her memories would be a mistake."

"Healing is never a mistake," Ongreya corrected him confidently. "The Psy Healer gift never leads me wrong."

Piekke reached them. "Twins?" she asked.

"It's time you told her the truth, Luke."

Lord Luke sighed. "Your truth can be hard to deal with, Ongreya."

"I know. But that's what I do. Help people deal with uncomfortable truths. That's how I heal."

"I know."

"I have a twin?" Piekke asked. "Is that the empty place in my heart?"

"It is," Lord Luke sighed. "But no, you don't have a twin. Anymore. I'm sorry. I was only trying to protect you. To help you find yourself as a Jedi before you had to deal with the person you used to be."

"The time to deal with the truth has arrived," Ongreya pronounced. She did not exactly rub her hands together, but her vocal tone implied she was thinking about it. There was some juicy secret she was about to reveal in her subcast. This is the kind of stuff that kept her subscribers paying money for subscription renewals year after year.

"Tell me," Piekke urged.

"Piker. His name was Piker. He's dead. I'm sorry." Lord Luke's expressive voice fell to a whisper on that last word, packing a world of meaning into it.

"You killed him?" Piekke asked.

"No!" Lord Luke realized his voice had gone to an undignified high pitch, and got it back under control. "No. He accidentally blew himself up with his own bomb, trying to kill me. I was your last assignment, Piekke."

"The bomb. The bomb that we were flying away from? You saved me but not my brother?"

"An earlier bomb."

"Tell her the rest," Ongreya urged. She did not know what the rest of the story was, but it was as obvious to her as a star in the void of space that Luke was hiding something important.

"The details don't matter," Lord Luke claimed.

"What is your secret?" Ongreya asked. "You're hiding something about the way Piker died. And you're hiding something about yourself, too. Show me your truth." Ongreya exerted her power. It rarely worked on Luke, but sometimes, when he was already worked up and in the middle of a session, it could push him the rest of the way toward revealing the truth he needed to face. She remembered that from when she had healed him at the Jedi Academy. "Show me your truth," Ongreya said again. It was not exactly the Jedi Mind Trick, which would not have worked on Lord Luke, but it sounded like it and it felt like it.

Lord Luke found that he could not resist Ongreya's power; her pathways into his mind were laid too well, carved too deeply, and too full of the memory of relief and gratefulness brought about by the healing long ago. His truth popped into sight: the White Current illusion fell away. He knew it the moment it happened, and turned away from the camera on her head in sudden terror. The other Luke must not become aware of his existence before he returned. And Queen Dije must not know Lord Luke was here and that Piekke had failed in her mission to kill him. And he must not sow suspicion of the other Luke among the rest of the Jedi and the other people of this galaxy, which seeing Luke's face with Sith tattoos surely would do.

"Luke?" Ongreya asked his back. "Your hair turned white. What just happened?"

Lord Luke felt Ongreya's hand on his arm. In a moment she was going to turn him around and his real face was going to be on camera. He had to do something. But he couldn't attack Ongreya; she was a person of nearly pure goodness, her commercialism notwithstanding. If there was anything of the Dark Side about Ongreya, it was no more than the shadow that follows all living beings everywhere, and was a normal part of existence in the universe.

Lord Luke reached for the power of time. He concentrated on the idea of making a bubble, in which time would flow on both inside and out but they would be disconnected from each other, like a capital ship's energy shield keeping a landing bay full of atmosphere, when it would otherwise be open to space.

The sky went dark. The trees disappeared. The three of them stood on a patch of grassy meadow, surrounded by a grey soap bubble.

A warning beeping sound went off in Ongreya's hat. "I've lost my connection to my ship's computer," Ongreya said. "I'm not subcasting. What is that stuff out there?"

Lord Luke laughed a little in relief. "I did it. Piekke, I did it. The time bubble."

"What's going on, Luke?" Ongreya asked. Her hand was still on his bicep, and now he did not resist as she turned him around. She gasped and dropped her grip on his arm. "Luke?" Ongreya backpedaled to the edge of the bubble, trying to get out of lightsaber dueling range. Even though her subcast was not going out anymore, she never took her eyes off Luke.

"Relax," Luke said, absent-mindedly scratching his back again as he concentrated on the time bubble. "It worked," he told Piekke. "I didn't lose my memory."

"That's wonderful, Daddykins." Piekke flashed him a smile, but then asked urgently, "but what about my brother?"

"Yes," Ongreya said, recovering herself. She was still here to heal Piekke, even if the subcast wasn't working. "Tell her the rest of it."

"No," Lord Luke said. "Ongreya, there's no reason to burden her with all that. She's been given a second chance. Don't you see? Her whole previous life has been swept away."

"And she aches inside with not knowing," Ongreya said. "You should know better, Luke. Don't you remember how you felt about being kept in the dark about Leia?"

"That's not the same thing and you know it," Lord Luke protested, a little edge coming into his voice. After all, Piekke was not about to make a terrible wedding error.

"Poisonous secrets only result in more pain," Ongreya said. "Don't you want her to let go of her grief and move on?"

"Of course," Lord Luke said.

"Then tell her, and let her feel, and let her live it. She'll never move past it as long as all she knows in the hole in her heart."

Lord Luke nodded and closed his eyes for a moment, summoning calm through the Force. "I'm sorry, Piekke. I lied. Piker didn't blow himself up. You pushed the button. You didn't know. You thought you were killing me."

Piekke's face was a mask of horror. If there was a moment of disbelief, it passed before it reached her expression. She started to cry, and she turned and tried to flee into the woods.

Lord Luke caught her and held her with all the failing strength of his old arms. He put his flesh hand on her damp hair and pressed her face down onto his shoulder. She was not nearly as much shorter than Lord Luke as he had imagined.

After a moment, Piekke returned the embrace.

"That's right, go ahead and cry," Lord Luke murmured. "It's alright."

"Yes," said Ongreya, coming closer. "Let it all out. Let the grief pass through you. Only by facing your feelings do you come to the road of healing."

Satisfied with her patients' progress, Ongreya took off her hat and started fiddling with the camera's relay gear, trying to get the subcast to go back on. This stuff was gold, and her subscribers were missing it.

Piekke sniffled, "Why would I try to kill you? I love you, daddykins."

"I love you too, Piekke," Lord Luke assured her.

"This was my purpose?" Piekke asked. "You have your purpose in life carved into your arm. To stop Caedus. My mission was to stop you?"

"Yes. It was. Queen Dije meant well. She thought she had to protect the universe from me. But I have no intention of going over the same ground—the same time periods—again and again anymore. This is the final iteration. I'm not going to restart time again, no matter what happens. Not even to save my son. Because Dije is right, I am wearing holes in the space-time continuum. I have to stop restarting time. I only want to make things better, I don't want to destroy the universe."

Lord Luke's heart wrenched, because he realized he meant every word. He wasn't going to time travel to save his son Piker—but he wasn't going to time travel to save his son Ben either. Not anymore. He had come to the point where he had to let go.

The Old Order of the Jedi had forbidden attachment. When he had first found out about that, he had been horrified. He had thought the Jedi way had developed into something heartless and cruel, far more evil in a subtle manner than the selfish way of the Dark Side, which at least allowed the most beautiful of natural emotions, love. But now he knew better.

He held Piekke until she stopped crying. Then he held her some more. When he felt her start to shift her weight backwards to pull away, he said, "While your back there, do you mind scratching my back? Sorry, but something's really itching me. I must have gotten into something I'm allergic to in the ruins."

Piekke smiled a brave, social smile. But then her face fell again. "Oh—Daddykins, something moved under there."

"What?" Luke tried to crane his neck and look at his own back, which he could not have done even when he was young and flexible.

"Take off your shirt," she ordered, walking around.

He complied in an instant, afraid he knew what was wrong. "Is it the meat parasites?"

"I think so." She looked at the movements under his skin across his shoulder blade. "Yes, I'm pretty sure. I can't sense them in the Force. All I can sense is life, and it's you. But I can see them moving under there with my eyes."

"Oh, no."

"I know, you hate parasites. Hold still." Piekke pulled her utility knife and tried to gouge one of the worms out.

"Ow!" Lord Luke engaged a Jedi pain suppression technique.

"Darn, I didn't get it all. I only got half, and now it looks like it's growing a new one. I think I'll have to burn them out. Make a fire."

"Trees," Lord Luke said. "I'll have to expand the bubble to the trees. For wood. Let me think a moment."

After a few seconds, the grey bubble expanded.

"Perfect," Piekke said. She went off to the trees to get dry branches and brought them back to the cold campfire in the camp they had been aware from all day.

Ongreya said, "If you can expand the bubble to the trees, can you expand it to my ship?"

"So you can get parts for us? I think so."

"That too. Consider this, Luke. I can see why you might not want this all subcast right now. Apparently Queen Dije has targeted you for assassination, and you're not anxious to call attention to your location, or the fact that Piekke is no longer trying to kill you. Right?"

"Right," Luke said distractedly, scratching furiously.

"But you could let me record through my hat to my ship's computer, so I could edit some footage for later use. If my ship's in the bubble, it wouldn't connect to the Hobgoblin—the Holoweb, that is."

"OK. Yeah. Actually, sure, why not. As long as you don't subcast it until the time is right."

Piekke, done stacking wood in the campfire, asked, "When will the time be right?"

"When I leave this body behind," replied Lord Luke. That was as close to the truth about his immortality as he had ever come to telling anyone, but Ongreya brought that out in him.

"Oh, daddykins, you can't die."

"Don't worry, Piekke. I'm strong in Force. Leaving this shell is not the end."

Piekke nodded and bit her lip, and tears rolled down her face again. She wiped her face on her sleeve. Then she pulled Luke's saber off his belt and started the fire with it, and absently tucked it through her waistband.

"Expand the bubble," Ongreya urged Luke.

"Expand the bubble, right."

Piekke's eyebrow raised, and she opened herself to the Force to make sure that what she had just heard was a coincidence. She detected no lines of compulsion, though. Apparently Ongreya's power really was not the Jedi Mind Trick after all. Or, not exactly.

The grey bubble expanded again, and a pleasant chime issued from Ongreya's hat, indicating it was once again connected to the computer in Old Pointy.

Piekke picked up a stick from the fire and tried to get one of the worms. "Better, but not perfect," Piekke said. "It needs to be hotter. A lot hotter." Piekke pulled Luke's lightsaber out of her waistband.

"Oh, now wait a minute," Lord Luke said. "This is really playing with fire, Piekke."

She activated the saber. "You don't want those parasites to stay in there and multiply, do you? Just hold still."

"Uh, why don't I go into a healing trance?"

"No, you need to be awake. I can't sense them in the Force. You have to tell me if I've gotten them all. We can't let any survive to reproduce."

"Right. Of course."

"Now hold still," Piekke said, putting her left hand on his shoulder to steady him.

Then she carefully eased the point of the lightsaber into his skin. Despite being prepared and using a Jedi pain suppression technique, Lord Luke squeezed his eyes shut and made an incoherent sound of pain.

Piekke adjusted the angle and pushed. The lightsaber sizzled. One worm down. Many more to go.

Ongreya stepped in close, focusing on what Piekke was doing, but careful not to let Luke's face get out of the shot. Now, this was ratings gold. Nobody had ever gotten footage of the Twins torturing their victims to death. This, she might even be able to sell to the major networks.

Piekke traced another worm, charred slowly in at one end and burned through its twisted length, adjusting the angle as she went, making sure the worm did not burrow away from her.

Ongreya stepped a little to the left, setting up the shot so that the viewers would not see the worms moving under the skin. They would only see Piekke slowly and carefully burned Luke with his own lightsaber. Oh, yes. This she might even be able to sell to the SVN. No, no, better than that, to the Holonet News itself. A documentary, carefully edited and narrated.

"Go ahead and scream," Ongreya told Luke. "Holding your breath will only make you lightheaded."

Lord Luke followed her advice. He screamed. Piekke carved him again with the lightsaber. The screaming went on and on and on.

Gold.


	18. Chapter 18

The Final Iteration

Chapter 18

Luke and Piekke slid out from under the X-Wing. "Done," Luke said, extending a greasy hand.

Piekke grinned and shook it with her equally filthy hand. "We make a great team, daddykins. But don't you think we'd better test fly it before we call it a day?"

"Absolutely. You go ahead and take it up, Piekke. You need the practice."

"By myself?"

"Sure, you're more than familiar with the controls and all the systems by now. You've been living in them." Not literally, as Callista had once done with the Eye of Palpatine, but in the almost-inhabiting fashion that Dije had often used to fix machinery.

Piekke wiped her hands on the meadow grass before Force-jumping into the cockpit. Lord Luke stood back as Piekke fired up the fighter and took it for a spin. He grinned as she waggled the wings on her second pass over the valley.

Ongreya came up beside him, in her natural, green skinned form. "I've got a rough cut edited together," Ongreya said. "You sure you don't want to appear to die at the end? That would throw off the Queen's assassins."

"I'm going to be shucking out of this body soon anyway," Lord Luke said. He named a specific date.

Ongreya turned to look at him. She was wearing her hat, of course, which she never took off outdoors on this world, so the gesture had that slow and oddly smooth motion like a camera pan. But she was not recording right then.

"You know the date?" Ongreya asked incredulously.

"It's tied to a specific occurrence, which I am certain about," Lord Luke said. Lord Luke did not elaborate.

Ongreya sensed the presence of a truth she did not yet know. "What are you concealing, Luke?"

Lord Luke paused a moment, gazing at the low grey horizon. He had extended the bubble to the whole valley, and the repaired Stealth-X ran through its maneuvers under the edge of the time bubble sky. "You know, sometimes I impress even myself. Even the ancient Time Lords of the First Sith never made time bubbles like this."

"Come on, Luke. What is it? I'm not recording right now. You can tell me." Ongreya thought of trying to exert her power, but that only worked on Luke when he was already talking. She had to get him going on something first. "What is this power you have over time? And why do you look so old?"

"I look old because I am old," Lord Luke replied.

"You're not the same Luke I knew, are you?" Ongreya asked in sudden suspicion. He did not reply, so she prompted him. "In my documentary, I claim that Piekke gave you those tattoos as a form of psychological torture. Because your worst fear has always been ending up like your father. A Sith Lord. But it's not true, is it?"

"Of course it's not true. You know you made that up. It's part of your claim that your film of the parasite removal is footage of torture."

"Yes," Ongreya agreed. "In my voiceover narration of that footage—I left the screams audible in the background, after a few seconds of full volume scream, that's about all the average audience could take—I say 'The Grand Master Luke Skywalker is a powerful Jedi. Why doesn't he use his powers to escape from Piekke? It turns out, Luke had Piekke right where he wanted her. Piekke takes weeks to kill her targets, and she plays with her prey. Psychological tortures are just as important to her as physical ones. That's why she tattooed Luke with the tattoos of a Dark Lord of the Sith, because becoming a Sith is something he fears. But to find out what he fears, to enjoy tormenting his mind, Piekke had to listen to him. She gave him free reign to speak to her at length. And this is what he said."

Ongreya's voice fell out of the narration style for a moment. "Then I switch from the first parasite removal to the second one, after you stepped on some parasites getting out of the bathing pool. Piekke said you'd lose too much skin off your foot if she burned through it with the lightsaber to get to them."

Luke continued for her, "And you filmed Piekke skinning me, starting at the foot, like she's done to dozens of her victims. More fake torture footage."

"Yes," Ongreya said, "but this time I left in part of what you two were actually saying to each other. You remember."

"I was rambling," Lord Luke said. "Trying to take my mind off my foot."

"At one point, I told Piekke why she knew how to skin people," Ongreya prompted.

"Yes. She was upset. She got angry about her brother's death, but then she felt the Dark Side's power drawing near her, and she pulled away from it. I was so proud of her. It responded to her anger, but she wanted no part of it. So proud."

"Do you remember what you said to her? You whispered, 'let go of your hate, Piekke.' And she said, 'I reject the Dark Side.' Then I tell the audience that you turned Piekke to the Light."

"Perfect," Lord Luke said. "That perfectly accounts for everything. It will even perfectly account for the young Luke's missing time, in the days he'll spend trying to work himself up to become Darth Vengeus, right before my arrival."

Ongreya was suddenly attentive. Lord Luke realized she had done it again: pulled a truth out of him that he had had no intention of telling anyone.

"Stop it, Ongreya," Lord Luke said.

Now Ongreya exerted her power. This was her moment. "Tell me the rest, Luke. You really aren't the Luke that I knew. After the date of your supposed death, there will still be a Luke Skywalker in the universe, won't there?"

"Yes," he admitted. "Dammit, Ongreya."

"I'm not recording," she reminded him. "It's OK. You're a Time Lord. A real Dark Lord of the Sith from another universe. Aren't you."

"Yes. Damn you."

"That's why the Queen wanted to kill you."

"Will you stick to our bargain?"

"Of course I will. I know your mind, Luke. Or Lord Luke, or whoever you are. You're planning to set everything in motion to make sure Darth Caedus won't rule the galaxy, go impart your last wisdom to the Luke who belongs in this timeline, and then become one with the Force. I see no evil in that. I'll help you as best I can."

Lord Luke sighed in relief. "Thank you." The secret of his immortality was still safe.

The Stealth-X was landing. The engine whined as it shed speed and touched down in the clearning.

Ongreya said, "It's time for Piekke to go."

"I need my X-Wing," Lord Luke said.

"I know. She can come with me in Old Pointy."

"Alright."

"May the Force be with you. Good visions."

"And with you, Ongreya."

Lord Luke popped the time bubble. Sunlight came back to the meadow, turning the dewy grasses to gold. It settled among the trees, making steam rise from the forest.

"Piekke is your apprentice now," Lord Luke said.

"The other Luke kicked me out of the Jedi Order. For refusing to give up the Psy Healer subcast."

"Then he's a young fool. Consider yourself back in. I'll see to it."

"You're very confident he'll listen to you."

"Very."


	19. Chapter 19

The Final Iteration

Chapter 19

Clouds issued from one spot and filled the valley with a roar. It was not the dreaded volcano, but Old Pointy taking off in slow motion.

Lord Luke had done everything he could for Piekke. He had even convinced Ongreya to let Piekke borrow her lightsaber for a few hours to spar with Lord Luke. Naturally, Ongreya filmed it. Subcast it too, since it didn't belong in the documentary she had already finished. It was OK, though. Lord Luke had had his Luke illusion back on. There had needed to be some kind of subcast to explain the sudden end of the one that he had interrupted with his time bubble.

He sighed. Now he could get down to the serious business of having visions. Attuning to the Force. Slipping into it like the White Current, to subtly affect Caedus's visions, so Caedus would not notice Lord Luke's hand.

As long as Lord Luke somehow managed to remain free of more of those darned parasite worms. He didn't really want to be alone on this planet with them. Well, there was no help for that. He was just going to have to be careful.

Lord Luke walked to the top of the hill before sitting down on a log to start having visions. The farther he was from the water, the less likely he was going to encounter the parasites.

He sunk into vision. He was not trying for a particular vision at the moment, or trying to affect Caedus's visions. He was just attuning to Force-visions in general. He had done a little Caedus-tweaking while Piekke was there, but he had wanted to spend enough time with her to make sure she was set on the right road. The Jedi way. Now he had no distractions from his goal.

He sank into the Force like sinking into a hot bath. He knew that time in the rest of the galaxy had progressed, and Mara was dead again. The pain was only a tiny little tug at his heart now. He was growing more and more detached.

The stars of the galaxy wheeled about him. His mind rushed, rushed, like wind, drawn to his other self. He saw Coruscant, and the Masters gathering for the Masters' Council.

Abruptly the vision shifted. He saw another Masters' Council on another day. He was old, as he was now, but had no tattoos. It must be the other Luke, in the real future.

A Jedi with one of those Jedi detector devices from the old Empire was there. What had those things been called?

This was no memory. It was a real vision, of a future Lord Luke had never lived.

The Jedi held the plates up around Jaina – Master Jaina, middle aged and gone somewhat paunchy. It generated a schematic of her, with the strong blue aura of a Jedi.

The young Jedi tried another person, again blue. Kyp Durron: blue.

Kyp said, "I remember this thing, or one like it. We found it in an old Imperial interrogation center during the renewal of Coruscant after the success of the Rebellion. It showed me red, back then. But I'm blue like the rest of you now. You were excited by this thing back then, Luke. You thought you might be able to use it to help restore the Jedi Order. What do the colors mean? Was it red because I was untrained? It was before I came to the Jedi Academy."

"No," Lord Luke said. He stepped forward idly and encouraged the young Jedi with a gesture to try the detector paddles on Luke, too. Lord Luke continued, "It showed you red back then because you'd learned to use the Force, a little bit, before you came to the academy. But you were using it in anger. Red means the dark side."

The wire-line schematic image of Luke appeared in the air. His aura was red.

Lord Luke's jaw dropped and he sat down heavily, hand over his heart. "I thought I was OK. I really thought I was OK."

He lifted wide eyes to Kyp, and then the rest of the Masters.

"It must be out of adjustment," the young Jedi said, fiddling with the detector.

Lord Luke said, "I was congratulating myself for getting through the whole Caedus ordeal without…"

"Run it again," said Kyp.

The young Jedi opened a panel, did something to the controls, closed it with a hasty snap and tried it again. Still red.

"I thought I was OK," Lord Luke repeated softly. "But I can't ignore the evidence of my own eyes. I—need your help. All of you. To find my way."

"Luke?" Kyp asked. "You've…"

"Fallen," Luke finished for him. He sounded incredulous.

He looked up at Kyp, and Kyp blushed. He did not know how he could help Luke. When Kyp had returned from the darkness, it had been because others had intervened for him by killing Exar Kun. That was not a model he could follow here.

Pey'slor, sensing an opportunity, said, "Until this problem is righted, another should lead the Council."

Lord Luke, thousand-year veteran of the Sith Court, was as ready as any Bothan to defend himself from power advantage. His voice sharpened and strengthened, and he barked, "Don't look for weakness here, Pey'slor. I am more powerful than any Jedi."

Then he blinked, his head rocking back a bit, realizing what he had said. Then he looked down and said softly, "No, you're right, I'm sorry. I can't lead the Jedi when I'm not even a Jedi myself. Kyp—you take over."

"Temporarily," Kyp said hastily, glancing at the Bothan. "We'll get this sorted out in no time."

"No," Lord Luke said. "It's over. I've done my best, and I accomplished everything I wanted to accomplish. The Jedi are strong, numerous, and respected. Caedus is dead, his tyranny swept away. The civil war is over."

"There's still the—"

Luke cut Kyp off. "There will always be new crises. But the Jedi are ready to handle them. Without me. I'm done. My work is done. It's time for me to go."

"Go where?" Kyp asked.

"Everywhere," Lord Luke whispered, and his voice filled the room with light. He attenuated and slipped away. His flesh transmuted to energy, and his clothes fell empty to the floor.

All the Masters leapt to their feet in astonishment. "We were wrong," Kyp said. "Sith don't do that. Luke has become one with the Force. He was a Jedi."

Lord Luke stretched in his new, luminous form, and sailed through the ceiling. Yoda was there, waiting for him. Obi-Wan smiled paternally at him, and Anakin Skywalker was there, looking much younger than Lord Luke—than Luke. Lord Luke no longer. And Mara was there, red hair blue-tinged and sparkling. Luke fell into her arms. Incorporeal, they merged together, becoming one being. Luke knew ecstasy.

She had been waiting for him. For a thousand years.

Lord Luke snapped out of the vision, panting and weeping. His obsession with perfecting the universe had kept him away from her all this time. Well, no more. He was only one lifetime away from her now. Soon, the time would be right. He would go to the other Luke, and Ongreya would run her documentary, explaining Piekke's new life, and he would vacate this body, and the Queen would not send any more assassins, because only the Luke who belonged here would remain.

Then he would defeat Caedus. Or, Jaina would. And then… then this new vision would come to pass, and he would be reunited with Mara. His efforts were coming to fruition at last, and he was almost finished. He just had to hang on a little while longer.

Meanwhile, in the real-time Master's Council, the Luke who belonged in this universe dragged himself to his seat and slumped into it. He did not notice the view of Coruscant air traffic out the window; he barely noticed the other Masters.

Pey'slor stood up and his fur ruffled briefly, in a gesture that meant he was 'uncomfortable'—the Bothan term for having to annoy one's leader at an inopportune time. Or any other circumstance in which neither doing nor not doing was to one's advantage.

Luke was not looking at him, though. He was lost inside himself, in despair, his face pinched tight with grief, for Mara was dead.

"I'm sorry to have to bother you at this difficult time," the Bothan Jedi began. "But there's been a sighting of the other you."

Luke looked up then. "The tacky whatsis particle leaving guy?"

"Yes. As some of you know, I," his fur rippled again, and he hurried on, "I am a subscriber to Ongreya's Jedi subcast." He rushed through that as if it were somehow embarrassing, just because he was the only person on the Masters Council who subscribed – or at least the only one who admitted it. "There was a live subcast late last night. I recorded this."

He used a remote control device to lower a screen from the ceiling and turn it on.

He ran Ongreya's subcast, which began with someone who looked just like Luke rushing out of the forest, shouting that Ongreya was there to save him. And then there was Piekke, and her amnesia, and the information that she had tried to blow up the other Luke with a bomb, and that her brother was dead.

Then, on the screen, Ongreya said, "Luke? Your haired turned white." And the picture went to static.

"There is six seconds of static," Pey'slor informed the Council. "And then this."

When the picture returned, the meadow was gone. The other Luke, wearing what appeared to be the emergency spare uniform from the stolen Stealth-X, was standing on a stone in the middle of a pool of turquoise water, a picturesque waterfall behind him.

Suddenly water droplets erupted from the pond, and Piekke jumped up from the water behind him, grabbing him around the legs and pulling him into the water.

A moment later, Lord Luke stood up in the waist-high water and pulled his lightsaber, which activated with the characteristic snap-hiss. Apparently it was water resistant.

Piekke also activated a lightsaber, small and oddly curved with a delicate purplish hue: Ongreya's lightsaber, which was a little disconcerting.

They lunged, parried, riposted, fought back and forth in the water, the energy blades hissing and spitting against each other, and sending up gouts of steam whenever they arced into the water.

"He's faster on the defense than the attack," Luke observed. "I don't think this is a real fight. It feels more like a sparring match."

"Perhaps he's only toying with her," Kyp Durron suggested.

On the screen, Lord Luke gestured and Force-pushed the water in the waterfall over onto Piekke, who washed off of her feet under the pressure. She flailed in the water for a moment and then climbed up on the bank.

Lord Luke leapt in front of her, attacking with a wheeling, snaking attack. Piekke barely countered, and then something happened, either she slipped or he Force-pushed her, and she fell on her butt, sprawling on the wet grass.

Lord Luke stepped on her hand, forcing her to release her hold on Ongreya's lightsaber. His humming green blade poised over her heart. "Any last words?"

In a small voice, Piekke said, "Daddy?"

Lord Luke sighed and deactivated his lightsaber. He backed off and clipped it back into his belt.

Piekke jumped up. She glanced as Ongreya's lightsaber, and then at Ongreya—or at the camera, it was hard to tell which. "I've never failed to terminate a target."

"I know," Lord Luke said.

"We'll meet again," Piekke said shakily. Then she ran off into the underbrush.

The subcast ended.

Luke shook his head. "I don't know. Ongreya's never set up a fake subcast as far as I know, but that just felt off somehow."

"It didn't sound scripted," said one of other Masters. "Most regular people can't pull off lines like actors can."

"But the six seconds," Pey'slor insisted. Then he sat down in his seat as if he had decided he did not want to draw too much attention to himself.

"Yes," Luke said. "I don't know that planet, so I don't know how far away the clearing was from the waterfall, but the other me changed his clothes. He was wearing a Sith bodysuit and cape in the first sequence, and pilot fatigues in the second."

One of the other Masters said, "I believe holodrama makers call that a continuity error."

"It was a setup," Luke concluded. "Something happened during those six seconds. A lot of something, probably, if he really does affect time somehow. That whole thing was staged. Probably to convince Queen Dije that she doesn't need to send another assassin."

"Would she draw the same conclusion?" asked another Master.

"Why don't we ask her?" Luke said. "Despite everything that's going on in the Galactic Alliance, the government of Sith-ta did establish an embassy on Coruscant. Copy that recording and messenger it over."

"Is that wise, Grand Master?" asked one of the other Masters, a nonhuman who rarely spoke in the Council, so when he did say something, people paid attention.

"What, contacting the Sith? Or being seen to contact the Sith?" Luke asked. "You know what? I don't even care. The other me is, is somebody else's problem. Let Dije deal with him. Or not." Luke abruptly rose and left.

One of the other Master half rose from her chair, but Kyp gestured her down. "Let him be. Mara's death has shaken him. Give him time to get over it. The other Luke is a problem, though, and it's our problem. What if he tries to replace the real Luke? He looks just like him."

"No," someone else said. "He doesn't—that white hair, when he turned away. Ongreya must have pierced his illusion."

"Of course. And Ongreya is not very strong in the Force, except in her narrow little specialty. If she could do it, any of us could too."

"Ah," Kyp sighed and waved for everyone's attention. He naturally assumed leadership when Luke wasn't there. "If there's nothing else? This meeting is adjourned."


	20. Chapter 20

The Final Iteration

Chapter 20

The wind never really stops in the upper reaches of Coruscant. Up here, where the glittering spires of wealth and commerce rub elbows with the very tops of blocky, efficient government buildings, at the level at which all offices are corner offices and the lights stay on at all hours of the day and night, and the skyhooks of their dilettante sons anchor off of anywhere out of sight of the offices of the leaders of industry, the wind is a constant push, and Luke was knocked off balance by its sudden disappearance as a dome closed over the rooftop on which he stood.

"So. You again," Luke said to Lord Luke as the Sith Lord walked toward him. "Nice illusion. Doesn't feel like White Current, though."

"It's not. And it's not an illusion, exactly. It's a pocket universe, in fact."

"So Caedus can't see this sudden new architecture right next to his GAG headquarters?"

"No. Caedus had a very complete education in various ways of using the Force and other paths of power. But manipulating time and the fabric of the space-time continuum is beyond even his power."

"How much of a risk are you taking, doing this? For the universe, I mean."

"Not as much as the Queen would think, I'm sure. So you still care about the universe?"

"Of course I do." Luke's voice was expressive as ever, despite his new wardrobe, which looked rather like Lord Luke's.

"If you're here, now, then you're watching GAG headquarters, waiting for Caedus to come out."

"Yes."

"You're on the brink of becoming Darth Vengeus."

"Yes I am, and don't try to stop me. Is that why you're here? Is this going to ruin your plan to defeat Caedus? Well, too bad. I'm sure I can kill him."

"You're not sure, but that's beside the point. The potential of Darth Vengeus is limited. The potential of Lord Luke has no limits."

For the first time, Luke really looked at Lord Luke. He turned away from watching GAG HQ. Lord Luke was white-haired, and so wrinkled his tattoos had become a little hard to read. Of course, Luke already knew what they were. The two of them were dressed alike in black bodysuits and black capes. The only shiny thing in either ensemble was their silvery lightsabers dangling from their belts. Luke's, a black military web belt; Lord Luke's, black snakeskin from Sith-ta, a souvenir of the court of Queen Dije.

"You don't want to save me from turning to the Dark Side. You just want to be sure I become the right kind of Sith."

"Almost." Lord Luke paced closer until he stood close enough to put his hands on Luke's shoulders. "That's a very trusting gesture, on Sith-ta. Allowing a Dark Lord to touch you palm down. You do trust me, don't you, Luke?"

"Why should I?"

"That's not the question. You do trust me. You always have."

"Alright, yes. Mostly. But you want something. Is this the dark design we spoke of when we parted?"

"It is." Lord Luke dropped his hands but remained inside Luke's personal space. Luke did not seem to mind, as if in some way he felt he and Lord Luke were the same person.

Lord Luke sighed and gathered his breath for a practiced speech. "I've had many years to think about this moment. What I would say, how I would convince you to let me fulfill my plan. I finally decided on the unvarnished truth, frightening as it is. Luke, have you ever wondered how I managed to live for a thousand years?"

Luke shrugged a little. "How?"

"Not in the same body, obviously. No. I've found a way to, to house myself in living flesh. It can only be done in a genetically identical body. The Emperor Reborn used clones. I've been inhabiting the body that belongs in whatever timeline I'm in when I come close to death."

"You want to steal my body?" Luke asked, incredulously, taking a step back.

"Not steal. Share. I pick up the native souls as I go along. You would become immortal too, as I am. It would not be a matter of you and I competing for one form, no. We would become one. Like pouring two glasses of water together in the same pitcher. After that they are just water, inseparable. But larger. As my soul becomes larger, more powerful, every time I jump hosts."

"I wouldn't be me anymore. I would be Lord Luke."

"The person we would become would indeed be Lord Luke. Is that so bad? You were ready to become Darth Vengeus, and for what? No better power than what you could access by yourself, just with less moral constraints on your actions. Let me in, Luke, and you will have access to all my power. Even the power to bend time, stop it at will, step out of the universe into a pocket universe like this one, and then erase it when you're done. You'll have more power than any Jedi ever had, more power than any Sith ever had, even the First Sith. I've surpassed even them. I don't need the Great Machine. Not anymore. That's how I got here, despite having its co-ordinates burned out of my mind."

"You've become a master of time?"

"I have become a god! Will you join me? Will you ascend with me? Will you hold the beating heart of creation in the palm of your hand, stretch forward and backward and become a nonlinear being? Will you step beyond light and darkness into dimensions where the Force is a child's plaything and the White Current is an appetizer for powers beyond the imagination of beings of linear thought? Will you pluck the fruit of immortality from the tree of life and savor the juice that runs down your arm as the lifeblood of the universe, to be scattered or pooled or sucked dry at your whim?"

Luke looked into Lord Luke's weathered face. He saw the fire that burned in his eyes. It was not merely the mad light of the fanatic, obsessively dedicated to Caedus's destruction, although the two of them shared that feeling. No, Luke saw that Lord Luke spoke the truth. That was god-light in his eyes. Or demon-light. Perhaps it was the same thing. From a certain point of view.

Luke said, "Yes."

"Then drop your shields and open your mind to me. Receive me with open arms. And prepare to become Lord Luke."

Luke willed away his shields. He trembled slightly, as if cold. Then the great onrushing mind swept into him. For a moment Lord Luke's soul appeared like a great dark bird, its wings reaching outward like a billowing cape.

Lord Luke's body crumpled and fell and disappeared before it hit the ground. His mind filled Luke's younger, stronger body now, filled it out to the final cells of his skin.

It was a great light, or perhaps a great darkness. Such categories had no meaning now.

Luke was Lord Luke now. He had all the power, all the wisdom, and none of the outward marks of Sithdom, save his clothes and the red lightsaber. What a foolish gesture that had been. Weapons, hah. A true Sith Lord needed no weapon but his mind.

He dismissed the pocket universe with a gesture.

Luke had come up here plotting to kill Caedus himself, but Lord Luke knew that destiny belonged to Jaina. His role was the subtle direction, not the slicing sword.

At that moment, Darth Skywalker, son and heir of the Queen, appeared at the top of the ladder over the side of the building, and stepped out onto the rooftop.

"Come back to the light," said the little boy, his love for his father radiating outward like pure golden sunbeams.

Foolish child, thought Lord Luke. Now I truly know, father. That appeal only works for those who already have decided.

"I am no more Darth Vengeus," said Lord Luke with all the kindness he could muster. "I will take the ruby out of my saber and let it go green once again. I am still Grand Master of the Jedi Order. I will not kill the thing Jacen has become."

"That is the right decision, father! I am so proud of you!" The boy hugged him around his legs. Love poured off of him.

"Thank you, youngling." Lord Luke raised his eyes and saw his other son – his other acknowledged son. "Ben. If you've come to save me, there's no need. Everything's going to be alright now."

"You're sure?" Ben asked.

"I'm sure. Everything in the universe is going to turn out just fine."

Lord Luke walked back inside, ignoring the scuffling behind him as his sons sorted themselves out. Let them find their own paths to power. Lord Luke had more visions to send to Caedus. And a young woman to encourage. It was time to subtly point Jaina down the path to apprenticeship to Boba Fett. Yes, indeed, this time, everything in the universe was going to turn out just fine. Lord Luke smiled.


End file.
